Open enrollment goes online

Your employee benefits fair will look a little different this fall.

“Most employers, if not all of them, are moving to some type of virtual open enrollment experience,” explained Mark Tortora, a partner at Strategic Benefit Advisors, a consulting and brokerage firm based in Southborough, Mass., that helps employers select health and welfare benefits.

Open enrollment is the time when many employees learn about and select their benefits for the coming year; typically, it happens in the fall for a Jan. 1 start date.

And this year, Tortora says, employers and their benefit partners are trying to make the experience as interactive, educational and personalized as possible for employees.

What to expect

For instance, health plans, such as Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts, will be rolling out a variety of virtual options to help members learn about and select their health benefits during this year’s open enrollment, explained Blue Cross Senior Director of Account Service Mary Jo Coady.

“We’ve enhanced and expanded our virtual open enrollment offerings this year,” she said. They include live webinars, pre-recorded presentations, websites with tools to help people pick a plan or estimate their costs, and a hotline they can call to ask questions.

Coady added that the health plan’s service team also is available to answer employees’ benefit questions: “Even though we are remote, we are fully staffed to support our members.”

She noted that these options aren’t new: “We’ve been moving in this direction for a while now,” she said. “The concept of virtual isn’t new for us—what’s new is not also being able to be there in person.”

Blue Cross Director of Sales and Account Service Cynthia Thell added that the core open enrollment experience won’t be changing: “This year’s experience should feel seamless to you. We’re providing the same information as we would in person, and the ability to chat with us and connect with us is staying the same. We’re trying to be as flexible as we can be and meet our members where they’re at,” she said.

In addition to educating members about their benefits and any changes to their health plans for 2021, Coady said Blue Cross also is providing an overview of the benefits they are offering during the pandemic, such as covering telehealth services in the same way as an in-person visit and waiving all cost-sharing for treatment of COVID-19.

A better experience

Tortora believes the move online will create a better overall experience for employees.

For example, he noted that since almost everything will be online, employees can access presentations, tools and resources when it works for their schedule—and even involve family members in the decision-making process. “It may be a more collaborative experience for people this year,” he said.

He added that “office hours” or 800-lines staffed by benefit representatives may provide a better experience than waiting in line to speak with someone at a benefits fair: “Live conversations with experts may be more personalized than they would be at an in-person benefit fair.”

And while many of the employers Tortora works with have tried to avoid significant benefit changes this year, he said if there are plan changes, a virtual environment may offer a better way to educate employees about them. Employees—especially those working remotely—can go back and read or listen to updates and schedule time to get their questions answered.

“2020 is a year where employers are going to find the best possible ways to make their benefit offerings very clear and understandable to their employees. Some are taking a more creative approach, and some are using tools they already have. Our hope is that we will see a more engaged workforce, benefits-wise, going into 2021,” Tortora said.

Lasting change?

With many employers and health plans moving in a virtual open enrollment direction for some time now, will we ever go back to in-person events?

Like many other shifts today to virtual meetings, remote learning and telehealth, Tortora believes many elements of virtual open enrollment are here to stay.

However, he doesn’t believe in-person benefit fairs will ever fully go away: “Especially in industries where there are multilingual employees and employees who aren’t in front of a computer a lot,” he said, “I think we’ll still be providing support in person.”