¶ Intro / Opening
If you're an employer offering company sponsored group health and benefits, Open Enrollment allows your eligible employees to choose or adjust the benefits that best meet their needs. It's also your chance to establish a plan that helps drive your business strategy. Managing Open Enrollment can be daunting but it doesn't have to be. Welcome to HRpreneur,
this is Jim Duffy. From main street to your street the HRpreneur podcast is centered around helping small businesses like yours, gain the knowledge you need from HR payroll and hiring to time taxes, benefits, and insurance. Today, we'll talk with our guest, Mike Loban about five steps businesses can take to help simplify open enrollment for the business owner and its employees.
Mike is a licensed health and benefits agent with Automatic Data Processing Insurance Agency Incorporated, which is an affiliate of ADP. Mike specializes in helping businesses select and offer group health and benefits that meet the specific needs of the business and its employees. Welcome back to the program, Mike. It's great to have you join us once again.
Thanks, Jim. It's great to be with you.
So, Mike, before we begin, I thought it might be helpful to our listeners. if you could just take a moment to introduce the agency. It's possible some of our listeners might not be aware ADP has an affiliate that is a licensed insurance agency. Would you mind just sharing a few words about it?
Sure thing, Jim. As you mentioned in your introduction, Automatic Data Processing Insurance Agency, Inc., or ADPIA, is an affiliate of ADP. as a full service insurance agency. ADPIA works with more than 250,000 small business clients. We have 1,100 licensed agents who help simplify business and health insurance so our clients can easily evaluate, select, and manage policies that meet their unique needs.
We have a lot of information and resources available on our website. 35,36, Which is insurance.adp.com.
Great, Mike. Thank you for that.
¶ Where to begin
Uh, so let's dive in when it comes to open enrollment, where should a business owner or a benefits administrator begin?
First thing to do is to start with a benefit strategy. There are many options to consider. So the benefits you decide to offer should align with a defined employer benefit strategy that considers your business goals, your employee needs, and your budget. If you're in a highly competitive industry where talent is hard to find, you may need to offer a more comprehensive and competitive benefit strategy.
If you're in a less competitive talent environment, you might ask employees to share more of the cost burden of those benefits.
¶ Employee input to inform a good benefits strategy
Mike, what kind of inputs could help inform a good benefit strategy?
Well, that brings us to our second tip for a smooth enrollment, which is to be sure to get employee feedback on potential benefits. For example, you should ask your employees what benefits do they like, what benefits don't they like, what benefits would they like to learn more about. An employee benefit survey is a great way to help understand employee benefits preferences.
There are simple survey tools available that enables you to gather information that can help inform your approach to open enrollment. And that sets the stage for getting the level of participation that you want to see.
¶ How to help your strategy be current and compliant
Mike, we know the benefits landscape changes, including new regulations and new plan types. So how can business owners or plan administrators make sure their benefits strategy is current and compliant?
Yeah, I can't emphasize enough how helpful it can be if you work with a licensed broker or agent who understands your goals to develop and implement your benefit strategy effectively. An experienced licensed agent should help you get the best value for your investment. We can't overlook that second to payroll, benefits are generally the second biggest investment companies make.
Your agent will help you align your organization's benefit strategy and budget with what's currently available on the market. They have access to the market and knowledge of the latest carrier offerings and incentives. A good agent should also bring new ideas to the table. If you've been on the same plan year after year, it's probably not because there aren't better options out there.
It's likely that your current broker isn't taking the time to educate you enough about what's new and relevant on the market. An effective agent is a strategic advisor who's asking probing questions and discusses options. If you're not having consultative conversations with your broker, you really owe it to yourself and your employees to look for other options. And Jim, you mentioned new plan types. I'd like to give you an example of the kinds of education a broker can offer.
There's a relatively new benefit option that might be of interest to business owners. It's called an ICHRA or Individual Coverage Health Reimbursement Arrangement. Depending on the circumstances, ICHRAs might be an ideal alternative to a group health plan for some businesses, and an ICHRA may satisfy the Affordable Care Act mandate. It's also worth noting there are no contribution limits or participation requirements.
You can customize your employee allowances, and your ICHRA contributions are tax free for both the employer and the employee. There's obviously more details to talk about with ICHRAs, but it's a good example of how a strategic broker can help advise you on what's best for your unique needs.
I'd like to add one more point about why it's important to engage an agent, if I may, Jim, and that is, if you manage your benefits manually with pen and paper, it's terribly inefficient and you're liable to make errors. With an online digital platform, you and your employees have more visibility into their benefits. An online benefits administration solution also simplifies compliance reporting.
If you're administering your benefits manually, you most definitely should speak to your broker about which online platform is best for your unique needs.
Mike, there's a lot of sound advice there. So thank you for sharing that. Uh, clearly benefits can be complex, especially for those outside the industry. So it does make sense to trust professional guidance and to use an online benefits administration platform to simplify everything.
¶ What information and data to gather
So, Mike, you've covered three tips so far. You start with a strategy, you get feedback from your employees, and then you seek out advice from a licensed agent. What's next?
If you're going to go with a new plan, you'll need a lot of information to make sure the process is efficient. It's very helpful to get all the information pulled together before you get started. For example, you'll need information on each of your employees and their dependents to complete a census. And this is the document that insurance companies use to estimate the cost of the benefits plan. The carrier might also want to know about your claims history over the past year.
You should also have on hand summaries of your current plans, benefit summaries and your actual renewal documents. You can simplify the entire open enrollment process by having this kind of information available in advance
Yeah, Mike that makes perfect sense that you'd want to get ahead of that by having all that data on hand. So if you wouldn't mind, please
¶ Identifying ways to improve the process
let's turn to tip number five. What can you share with us?
Discuss last year's process with your broker and it'll help identify ways to improve the process and make it more efficient. For example, as I noted before, can you digitize or automate steps that were paper based or manual last year and probably error prone? Did you get the level of employee participation in the plan that you wanted last year?
Since open enrollment is your chance to make changes that will set you up for the entire year, it's to your advantage to think through the entire process to make sure you get it right. Your broker should play a critical role along the way, especially in helping you take advantage of benefits administration technologies that simplify open enrollment for both you and your employees.
That's great, Mike. This brings us to the end of our episode. Thank you again for joining us. Uh, Mike, I took a few notes of the tips and I'd like to just recap them for our listeners. So, uh, number one, you'd mentioned start with a strategy. Number two, get input from your employees about their benefit preferences. Number three, you'd mentioned get advice.
Get advice from a licensed agent and number four, you had talked about gathering data to make sure your open enrollment process is efficient. And lastly, you said to consult your broker about ways to improve the process for next year. So did I capture those five tips accurately?
Yes, sir. You got it.
Great. Thank you again, Mike. Presented by ADP, HRpreneur focuses on the entrepreneurs and business drivers who are shaping the growth of their companies and positively impacting the lives of their employees. With each episode, we'll bring the experts to you, answer your questions, and help you think beyond today so you can discover more success tomorrow. As always, thanks for listening to HRpreneur. Be well, and we hope you'll join us again soon.