Brokers know that this is crunch time. With the open enrollment period fast approaching,employers – especially those with newinitiatives – may require more support from their brokers than everbefore.

Whether they're tasked with migrating more employees from PPOsto CDHPs, introducing an array of voluntary benefits orcommunicating medical and insurance rate changes, brokers should beprepared to tailor their strategies and align services to matchtheir employer clients' desired enrollment outcomes.

While that may sound challenging, it can be as simple as keepingto this three-step process.

1. Implement active employee engagement

Most employers don't need much convincing that active engagementis an ideal approach to benefits communication and enrollment.

They know, likely through experience, that by allowing theiremployees to passively roll over health plans year after year, theyare more likely to incur added health care expenses that resultfrom employees selecting policies that may not match their actualneeds.

Take, for example, “Ben,” a sales representative for a midsizedsoftware company who has worked for his company for severalyears.

Since being hired, Ben has been promoted twice, gotten marriedand is relatively healthy. That said, Ben has a lot on his plateand may not choose to dedicate his free time to researching whichbenefits options are best for him and his growing family.

This is where an active enrollment comes in. Proactivelyengaging employees like Ben on their health care options throughone-on-one meetings will give employees a better understanding ofwhich plans work best for them.

In Ben's case, for instance, a high-deductible plan with ahealth savings account (HSA) may be a better fit for his currentsituation.

Of course, active engagement can take a lot of time, andemployers don't necessarily have the internal resources needed tosit down with every single employee and walk through theiroptions.

As a result, many turn to brokers for support implementing andexecuting against an active engagement strategy.

In alignment with growing demand from employers, a recent survey of brokers that work with largecompanies (i.e., that employ between 100 and 10,000 individuals),76 percent say that they're offering employee engagementservices.

2. Introduce advocacy and transparency services

There is a fair amount of confusion and stress when it comes totoday's health care system, made worse by a volatile regulatoryclimate, incomprehensible terminology and complex billing andpayment systems.

As a result, more than two-thirds of employers are askingbrokers for advocacy and transparency services to help bringclarity to increasingly complex health care processes. What dothese services look like in practice?

Revisiting our employee “Ben,” let's imagine that he needs tosee a specialist for a health care issue.

While Ben thought he had identified and visited an in-networkprovider, he found he was charged for out-of-network care.

In this case, if Ben's employer had offered health care advocacyservices, he would have been able to consult a knowledgeable,trained health care advocate to contest the billing issue andsecure an in-network discount.

In the future, Ben would also know that he is able to consulthis health care advocate before receiving care, so he can guaranteehis provider is in network and that both he and his insuranceprovider will be charged correctly.

While Ben spent a bit of time researching specialists before hemade an appointment, most Americans, according to a recent Health Affairs study, spend little if any time lookinginto different options or providers.

In fact, the survey found that just 13 percent of respondentslook up quality and cost data before receiving care. Especiallywhen price information isn't always accessible or comprehensible tothe average health care consumer, advocacy and transparencyservices can help make employees savvy shoppers before and longafter open enrollment has closed.

3. Marry these approaches into one strategy for openenrollment

This open enrollment season, keep in mind that the sum of thewhole is in fact greater than the sum of the parts. By combiningactive engagement, advocacy and transparency into a unifiedapproach to health care benefits, employees become smarter healthcare consumers, and employers have a greater chance of achievingtheir health care goals.

Brokers who can minimize the cost of employer-sponsored healthcare along with the undue stress placed on HR departments duringopen enrollment are those who are most successful.

This three-step process will empower brokers to better servetheir employer partners. And since it can be challenging toimplement new service offerings, it's crucial that brokers measurethe results of their service offerings.

They should consider questions such as, “Did the employerachieve its target enrollment percentage?” and “Are we seeing agrowing demand for our new offerings?”

Based upon this open enrollment post-mortem, brokers can createa differentiated, winning strategy for next year.

Bart Yancey is co-founder and CEO of DirectPath.