At a conference in December, one of my business contacts who was on the program told me: “Enrollment is dead—but I don't want to say that as a speaker.” As the session went on, I thought about what we he said and decided he was right, at least, “from a certain point of view.”

In the voluntary world, we've never thought of enrollment as the simple act of recording a benefit election from an employee, though that's what brokers and insurers think of when they use the word.

No, we think of enrollment in terms of a process—the process of assisting employees in making good, educated choices in the benefits they elect. As part of this process, we help them record those elections for the employer and insurers. This is a communication process.

The insight my associate spurred was that ours is a process of engagement as opposed to enrollment.

Enrollment processes are designed to record the benefit elections of eligible employees. Until a few years ago, paper forms were the prevalent media used, and those on the forefront of technology personalized the forms. We had enrollers, benefit counselors or benefit communicators make presentations and help people fill out the forms, either in group sessions or in face-to-face meetings.

Then we turned the paper form into a computerized vehicle— and designed screens that would allow us to have an enroller sit in front of an employee (or on the telephone), discuss needs and benefit options, and record elections. In effect, we replaced the piece of paper with a computer screen and keyboard. The recording process had changed, but the process was still based on the enroller model.

This all can work today, however the widespread advent of benefit administration systems has become a game changer. Employers and brokers want to rely on these systems to record elections and track eligibility, because they do a better job than paper forms, making fewer mistakes and feeding data automatically to insurers and payroll processors. But then what happens to the process of assisting employees in identifying their needs and understanding their benefits? That question takes us to our point of transition from voluntary benefit enrollment to voluntary benefit engagement.

Think about it. Enrollment never was just sitting in front of an employee—it has always had elements of a marketing campaign: letters from employer and/or union management, posters and flyers distributed at the workplace before enrollment, employee newsletter articles, home mailers, paycheck stuffers (remember when paychecks were printed on paper?) and so on.

Today, and into the future, we're increasingly focused on engaging customers in understanding their benefit needs and options. The benefit administration system will be the recording tool, but the actual added value of a voluntary benefit campaign will be orchestrated by building engaging tools into the system.

Instant Insights /

Enrollment is dead; long live engagement

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