It's not news that the stress levels in human resources departments have been rising for years, especially during open enrollment time.
The number of decisions employees face, the importance of those choices, and the limited support for making them, all add up to increased questions, confusion and frustration. Many brokers and most traditional worksite producers have long offered more invasive enrollment techniques and full benefit communications services as one way to ease the pressure and support employee decision-making. These methods, including face-to-face, one-on-one sessions, mandatory group meetings, and outbound call center programs tend to be more expensive, but also have historically produced higher employee satisfaction levels and greater participation.
And yet, a significant percentage of employee benefit brokers resist these approaches and rely exclusively on voluntary meetings, the Internet, or inbound call center programs. While these brokers don't challenge the superior results that the more invasive methods achieve, they consistently tell us that their clients would never allow those methods to be used. They also report that their current methods tend to be cheaper and easier to implement.
But for years, employers have been increasingly telling us a different story. In our periodic employer study MarketVision, The Employer Viewpoint respondents answer questions without the benefit of broker counsel and advice. In the last three of these unaided surveys (2002, 2006, 2009), more than a third of the employers would allow one-on-ones on company time, and more than half would allow a group meeting followed by one-on-one sessions. A slightly smaller percentage would approve of an Internet enrollment. And the results cross all account-size groups. An increasing number of employers and their HR staffs need enrollment help, including benefit communications and decision support.
After years of very little change, there are signs that brokers are getting the message.
The 2009 Eastbridge Employee Benefit Brokers and Voluntary study asked producers whether they now perceive a change in employer "openness" to different types of enrollment methods. For the first time, a majority (55 percent) reported that their clients' openness had increased, and 16 percent of those said that openness had increased significantly.
Invasive enrollments do tend to be more expensive, and complicated to arrange, with many more moving parts. But they often are the right choice for employers who are open to their use and are interested in high employee satisfaction and participation. They will never be right for all circumstances. But we need to get to the point that we are recommending enrollment processes because they do the best job of meeting client needs, not because they are simplest and least expensive for us.
Gil Lowerre can be reached at (860) 676-9633 or glowerre@eastbridge.com. Bonnie Brazzell can be reached at (803) 738-1236 or bbrazzell@eastbridge.com.
