Elevate Your Employee Benefits Strategy: How to Win with Voluntary Benefits and a Strategic Enrollment Partner
In today's competitive landscape, employee benefits are no longer a simple checkbox — they're a powerful tool for attracting and retaining top talent. As a broker, you're the key to helping your clients navigate this challenge. The best way to stand out? Go beyond core plans and build a robust voluntary benefits program complemented by a strategic enrollment partner. We sat down with our Enrollment Specialist, Suzy Mendelson, who offers key insights on why a solid voluntary benefits strategy is crucial to recruit, retain, and serve employees' interests.
The Modern Benefits Challenge
In a highly competitive hiring market, employers need to ensure their benefits package is aligned with industry standards and competitive for their market segment. Employee benefits are often the second-largest monetary expenditure for a company after payroll, making their value a crucial factor in a job decision and a key reason why people choose to stay with an employer.
Voluntary benefits offer a solution to this challenge. These employee-paid programs allow employers to enhance their offerings without increasing their benefits spend. This added programming provides flexibility, personalization, and added financial security for employees.
The Power of a Strategic Voluntary Plan
A comprehensive voluntary benefits program can seamlessly complement an employer's core benefits, creating a more attractive and competitive compensation package. Instead of being an afterthought, voluntary plans can be strategically designed to fill the financial gaps left in medical plans. A holistic approach to underwriting can even help employers avoid premium increases on their core plans.
In today's multi-generational workforce, a one-size-fits-all approach to benefits just doesn't work. A tiered or customizable voluntary benefits strategy, supported by a multifaceted enrollment partner, is key to ensuring high participation and employee satisfaction. Voluntary benefits range from traditional options such as hospital indemnity plans, to advanced financial solutions like Life with Long Term Care, and even innovative offerings that support mental health, financial wellness, and digital security. This variety empowers employees to allocate resources toward the benefits that best match their individual needs and priorities.
A Multi-Faceted Approach to Enrollment
The main goal of a strategic enrollment partner is to help businesses maximize the value of benefits offerings. Accretive Enrollment Solutions is passionate about ensuring employees gain the knowledge needed to use their plans effectively. This approach not only empowers employees but also reduces the burden on HR teams by minimizing the volume of routine, time-consuming inquiries about benefits.
The most effective enrollment firms offer a range of methods to meet diverse employee needs and preferences:
- On-Site, Face-to-Face Counseling: In-person meetings create a personal connection, build trust, and help employees become more educated healthcare consumers.
- Virtual Enrollment: Provides a personalized, one-on-one interaction with a benefits advisor in a private setting. This is a convenient option for employees working remotely or at home.
- Full-Time Call Center: Open 61 hours a week with bilingual and multilingual capabilities, this provides efficient, high-touch enrollment for employees who prefer to speak with an advisor by phone.
- Online Employee Self-Service: Available for groups, this is an efficient and cost-effective process that presents educational resources, videos, and decision tools to empower employees.
Modern Outreach & Technology
To ensure employees fully understand their options, a strategic partner uses dynamic outreach methods that meet employees where they are. Modern tools like email drips, text messaging, and outbound calls deliver consistent messaging, mitigate employer liability, and reduce incomplete or non-responsive enrollments. For example, studies show that approximately 92% of adults in the U.S. have a smartphone, and 90% of messages are read within three minutes.
Simplifying HR's Role
One of the top ways a strategic enrollment partner helps is by significantly reducing the administrative burden on HR teams. Instead of spending valuable time constantly answering employee questions about benefits, an effective enrollment partner will direct traffic and provide expert support on HR’s behalf. This allows HR to reallocate valuable staff to focus on more strategic initiatives for the business.
How to Showcase Value to Your Clients
As a broker, the best advice for showcasing the value of a solid voluntary plan strategy is to provide data. Accretive can help you:
- Benchmark: Present industry and market segment metrics to show what plans are offered and how your client can stand out from the competition.
- Demonstrate Financial Impact: Use claims data to illustrate the financial impact these plans have on employees and their families.
A comprehensive and competitive benefits package provides peace of mind, ensuring employees aren't stressed or distracted by financial worries, which ultimately leads to a happier, more productive workforce.
Elevate Your Client's Enrollment Experience
If your clients are seeing low employee participation or a lack of engagement with their benefits plan, it might be time for a new approach. The challenges of benefits enrollment can be significant, and sometimes the most convenient path doesn't yield the best results.
Accretive Enrollment Solutions can help. We take on the heavy lifting of planning and implementation, making the process smoother for employers and delivering a more impactful experience for their employees.
To start the conversation and get an expert consultation on how to enhance your clients' enrollment strategy, connect with a specialist by clicking the button below.
