5 Things Your Competitors Can Teach You About Open Enrollment

5 Things Your Competitors Can Teach You About Open Enrollment

Benefits, Communication Strategies, Open Enrollment

Open Enrollment can be an overwhelming period for both employers and employees. The season brings brokers and HR professionals an annual administrative headache with stress factors of the options of new plans and shifts in the level of participation.

It is a good strategic move to monitor what is working for your competitors and adapt some of their methods and techniques to maximize your own performance and growth. Here are 5 things you can learn from your competitors about open enrollment.

1) Plan Ahead, Start Early

Communicate early & often – don’t bombard your clients with loads of information at one time. Provide them with the dates of Open Enrollment, an overview of changes, and what this means to them.

Communicate clearly – don’t make assumptions about how well everyone already understands their benefit plans. We fight an endless employee benefits battle with half of the effort towards finding ways to communicate offerings that are understandable and easy to grasp. Make difficult benefit decisions easier by keeping everything organized and easy to follow with tips, guides, and checklists. Use Open Enrollment as an opportunity to listen to your clients to see what they do and do not understand.

2) Don’t Rely on One Communication Strategy

Workplace demographics can be very diverse, with differing preferences. Not all participants are the same, and the benefits they require will differ. This diversity allows you to create more personalized and targeted messages. Tailor messages to specific plans while presenting in the clearest and simple format. Create a 1-page ‘Quick Guide’ for your clients outlining the benefits and disadvantages of each plan option providing a clear insight into advantages, costs, and expectations.

Participants learn differently and at various speeds. They have their own preferences of how to receive communication. Deliver messages through different types of communication channels (email, social media, text messages, videos/webinars, blogs, message boards, FAQs, mailers, direct meetings, etc.). Meet your clients where THEY are, not where it is easiest.

Work with clients to enhance employee engagement.

  • Give a Lunch and Learn about topics like the difference between HSA, HRA, and FSA.
  • Hold a raffle or give door prizes to the first 25 people to complete enrollment.
  • Provide Open Enrollment counseling. Multiple factors go into someone’s health plan decision from comparing options to spouse’s plans, to family and lifestyle changes. Host a ‘Family Day’ for employees to include their spouses. Educate employees on their healthcare options, benefits summaries, changes in plans, important deadlines, and offer guidance to choosing the best plan for their family.
  • Use social media to give clients tips on healthcare plans, the enrollment process, or unseen features of their health plan.

Offer an online learning center portal to clients filled with articles and video courses to help clients and their employees explore and learn more about new or existing benefits that are being offered. Take advantage of the employees’ competitive instincts by giving various rewards to the employees who complete the courses.

3) Regardless of Whether Great or Awful News, Give Your Clients Timely Feedback

There are so many online tools that can help you deliver better and faster customer service and help to better your time management strategies.

Check out these FREE tools to use and recommend to your clients:

Cam Scanner – scan documents directly from mobile device – and make them look like real scans, instead of rushing to send out documents, can get it done on the go

Dropbox – store documents in the cloud and have them accessible from anywhere – have client folders in order and handy whenever needed

PrimoPDF – app to convert to, or print a PDF document

PDF Merge – merge PDF’s into one singular PDF file

PDFescape – perfect solution for anyone who has a digital version of their signature on computer and would like to add to PDF documents – upload any PDF doc, add signatures, text, and dates where necessary

Google Hangout – face-to-face video conferencing, screen sharing, instant messaging, podcasts, mastermind calls

Sign Easy – a tool for those who are always on the go. Create an account, “draw” your signature, and start signing documents from any mobile device (Free Trial Available)

FREE tools to help with time management:

Buffer – save time and simplify your social media routine by scheduling posts on all your social media networks.

RoboForm – password management app, works as a browser extension and allows you to easily save and store login to websites with a click of a button.

BuzzSomo – analyze what content performs best for any topic or competitor, provides content discovery/blog ideas, content alerts, competitor research (plugin domain and see which content they’ve created that has done well with social shares)

Grammarly – this tool helps to make sure everything you type is clear, effective and mistake-free.

Awesome ScreenShot – image annotation tool, a browser extension that allows you to take a snapshot of a part, or all your screen, add annotations, comments, blur sensitive info, and share with one-click uploads.

4) Think Beyond Open Enrollment

Never stop communicating! Keep your clients in tune with what is happening and changing on a continuous basis. Once an employee is enrolled, they will need help using their chosen plan. Provide your clients with ‘After Enrollment Tips’ through help videos, webinars, telephone support, or hold educational meetings.

When Open Enrollment season ends, start planning for the next year. Look back at last year’s process to determine what went well and what could be improved. How effective was the communication strategy? Was quality customer service delivered? What were the most time-consuming tasks and how can they be simplified for next year? What were the top questions asked by clients? Knowing what your challenges are and will be will help you revamp your strategy for next year.

Measure your success by meeting with clients to review what they liked, didn’t like, or would change for next year to see which strategies worked and didn’t work. Act on this feedback to streamline a more efficient process for next year.

5) Have a Partner to Help

Utilize a human capital management software to add value to your clients, remain competitive, stay on top of changes with updates to keep clients compliant with laws and regulations, worry-free ACA reporting and filing, automatic broker alerts, and more. Consolidating your products onto one cloud-based platform allows you to add or remove products when needed as well as deliver a streamlined enrollment experience to your clients.

For more information on how Highflyer HR can provide effective open enrollment solutions, Contact us at (844) 398-7800 or getstarted@highflyerhr.com.

Disengaged Employees Are Costing Companies Millions. What You Need To Do Now.

Disengaged Employees Are Costing Companies Millions. What You Need To Do Now.

Company Culture, Engaged Workforce, Human Resources Software

According to the latest findings from Duke’s Fuqua School of Business, over 90% of CEOs and CFOs consider the culture of their company to be critical to their business success. They know, and studies have proven, that the right company culture improves camaraderie and respect among peers, a comfortable work environment, tenure, and loyalty.

It also improves the quality of service and products, and the ability to attract and keep great talent.

What is company culture?

Company culture is just as palpable as the culture you experience with every new country. It’s how its people speak to each other and the ideas, values, and rituals they share with each other throughout their day. Laid back, competitive, collective, individual—several concepts factor into creating a company identity and developing the supportive structure of benefits, events, support, and motivation for group and personal success.

Where does company culture start and why is it important?

“There’s no question that company culture starts and ends with HR,” says Craig Broome, President at Highflyer HR. “It may trickle down from the executive branch, but human resources is responsible for implementing and maintaining it.” Since a company’s culture plays a huge role in how well its employees engage, perform, and stay in their positions, it is not a small job; according to a 2017 Gallup report on the State of the American Workplace, companies that score ranked with higher engagement percentages have a serious advantage over companies who struggle with employee satisfaction.

And there are significant stats to prove it. Companies with actively engaged employees report:

  • 41% lower absenteeism
  • 70% fewer safety accidents
  • 20% higher sales
  • 40% fewer quality defects
  • 21% higher profitability.

“Each study that comes out doesn’t say anything that HR managers haven’t known for years,” adds Broome. “It’s not that companies aren’t aware of the dangers of disengagement. It’s that they don’t know how to find time to fix it with everything else they have to do to maintain compliance, payroll, benefits, and administrative functions.”

With company culture being so important, how do human resources managers actively cultivate it given their current workload?

Sometimes it only takes one thing. For several companies, that one thing is automating HR processes and platforms. Doing so not only streamlines and consolidates data, but also validates and protects it from time-consuming errors, report generation, compliance issues, and platform management. By simply removing the slow nature of paperwork, these HR teams can take the time to strategize and implement programs that not only align with company success but the enrichment of their employees.

Disengagement is costly, but an engaged workforce pays for itself and then some. When HR teams have and take the time to develop the culture, it sets up the company for long-term success; candidates are screened based on qualifications and fit, employees feel like they belong to something bigger than themselves, executives can confidently predict performance, and investors see more value. When HR managers have the time and space to work, everyone wins.

Do You Know What Is The Most Important Document In An Employee’s Personnel File?

Do You Know What Is The Most Important Document In An Employee’s Personnel File?

Employee Handbook Acknowledgement Page

Pick an employee, any employee. The most important document in that employee’s personnel file – and in EVERY employee’s personnel file – is one you probably don’t give much thought to until the employee is not performing, not responding, or you are wondering if you can dismiss the employee. It is the Acknowledgement page from your employee handbook.

Generally placed in the back of the handbook, the Acknowledgement page states that the employee has received a copy of the employer’s policies and has had the opportunity to read them. Normally, there are both a contract disclaimer and an at-will acknowledgment as part of that page. If you update your employee handbook, you need to have new acknowledgment pages signed by all employees and kept on file as well.

If you are not having your employees sign this page and then keeping it on file, your business is at risk – at risk of taking an employment action based upon a policy that you cannot prove the employee had notice of. This can lead to an award of unemployment compensation and it can be used against you in a discrimination claim. All of this can be avoided if you simply make a regular practice of ensuring that ALL employees have signed their employee handbook’s acknowledgment page and returned it so it can be placed in their personnel file.

For those employers that have moved away from paper copies of their handbooks and instead put them online, you need some other form of acknowledgment documentation so you can show that the employee is on notice of the policies.

Employee Or Independent Contractor?

Employee Or Independent Contractor?

Employee Designation, Independent Contractor Designation, IRS Compliance

With so much in recent news about the fine line between employee and independent contractor, we thought we’d take a moment to break down the two designations.

There are several factors that determine whether or not the person performing the work is an employee or an independent contractor. They are, in large part, decided by how much control the employer exerts over the worker and the work involved.

For example, in a very simplified sense, the IRS considers a worker to be an employee if the company controls what work will be done, provides training and direction on how it is to be done, states when it is due, and who completes the job. It considers a worker to be an independent contractor if the company relies on his or her expertise, methods, timeline, and staffing.

Another important determining factor is whether or not the worker has a financial stake in the end result. On one hand, an employee can be rewarded, promoted, disciplined, or fired based on job performance (all the while getting paid). On the other, an independent contractor would suffer a loss if he or she performed more tasks than the original scope, but at the original price or if the company is dissatisfied with performance.

Worker Classification: Employees

  • Work for one company or employer
  • Maintain set hours, laid out by the employer
  • Complete tasks as determined by the employer
  • Participate in dedicated training from the employer to improve job success and performance
  • Typically work at the company place of business
  • Rely on their employer to provide work facilities
  • Significantly affect the success of a business
  • Receive benefits like 401(k)s, health, disability, and additional life insurance
  • Are eligible for expense reimbursement, unemployment, worker’s compensation, workplace safety, and anti-discrimination protections
  • Are covered by state and federal wage and overtime laws
  • Are paid a net salary after employer has withheld FICA

Worker Classification: Independent Contractors

  • Can provide services to more than one company
  • Offer their services to the general public
  • Set their own hours, which may or may not align with the ones of their clients
  • Work independently (for the most part), providing a specialized service or skill not orchestrated or trained by the client
  • Typically work out of a different office or their homes, although they may occasionally share space.
  • Pay self-employment tax
  • Are not eligible for unemployment, worker’s compensation, workplace safety, and anti-discrimination protections
  • Invoice according to their contract or written agreement

Employment status has important implications for taxes, liability, compensation, and benefits. The above divisions can help you determine where your workers fall, and how best to organize your efforts.

If you would like help assuring your HR technology aligns with your HR strategies, schedule an assessment with Highflyer HR by contacting us at (844) 398-7800 or email getstarted@highflyerhr.com.

Best and Brightest: Hans and Donna Sternberg Establish Largest Endowed Scholarship in Ogden Honors College History

Best and Brightest: Hans and Donna Sternberg Establish Largest Endowed Scholarship in Ogden Honors College History

Articles

On Thursday, April 6, in the French House Grand Salon, Hans and Donna Sternberg announced a leadership gift to the LSU Roger Hadfield Ogden Honors College. The donation is the largest one-time scholarship gift and the largest endowed scholarship in the history of the Ogden Honors College. The Hans and Donna Sternberg Endowed Honors Scholarship will strengthen the college’s ability to attract and retain exceptionally talented students at a time when scholarship support is crucial to promoting college access. Read More…

After selling the family insurance business earlier this year for $127 million, Donna and Hans Sternberg are launching another company in an entirely new field

After selling the family insurance business earlier this year for $127 million, Donna and Hans Sternberg are launching another company in an entirely new field

Articles

Donna and Hans Sternberg have a long history of building businesses together, and they’re showing no signs of slowing down at the helm of their new company, Highflyer Human Resources. Sternberg’s new company is called Highflyer Human Resources, and it sells Human Capital Management software and service, which means it fuses payroll, benefits and HR systems into a single, customized, cloud-based platform for small and midsized companies.
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