Congratulations, Benefits Professionals — you've accomplished another year's open enrollment! Whether you survived — or thrived — you have an opportunity to lead your organization's benefit evaluation.

It's time to charge full speed ahead with your open enrollment post-mortem strategy. By analyzing what went right, and what could be improved, you can help ensure an easier, more effective process for next year. This blog post helps you take actionable steps to collect, analyze and act upon data from four key groups:

1. Employees
2. Internal stakeholders
3. Your benefits broker
4. Your technology partner
   
   

With information from these four groups, you're on your way to all the information you'll need to improve your benefits strategy for next year.

But let's take this seemingly monstrous task and break it down into manageable chunks. Rather than looking at every group, let's start by focusing on the first, and most important, group you need to survey.

Recently, the IRS issued Revenue Procedure 2018-57, which announced more than 40 tax provisions for 2019, including the tax rate schedule, and other tax changes.

There were also several increases to 2019 benefits limits. View our infographic below to help illustrate the news.

A Standing Ovation is a special reward program at benefitexpress that honors employees who have gone above and beyond in fulfilling our Community Pillars. Each quarter, nominations are tallied, read, and carefully considered before being awarded to two employees. We announce this recognition at our company “Town Hall” all-staff meetings where the final nominations are read aloud to highlight just how much the winners have done to deserve the award. Aside from the recognition, each winner also receives a check for $2,500.

Tasha Cubero, client services team lead, wins the second Standing Ovation award for the third quarter atbenefitexpress.

If you've been following along with our four-part series, you are well on your way to crafting a strategy that aims to strengthen the employee benefits experience — all with the intention of helping your company attract and retain the right employees in today's competitive labor market.

With a solid strategy developed, and S.M.A.R.T goals determined, and the right benefit enrollment system selected for your requirements, you may be tempted to remove your foot from the gas and start working on other projects. Perhaps you are hoping that the upcoming open enrollment experience delivers the results you've planned for. However, hope is not a strategy! And easing up now can be the difference between providing a "good" benefits experience or an "exceptional" benefits experience for your employees. 

That's why in Part Four, we'll wrap up our series with some suggestions around strategy execution, and position a new normal: year-round benefits communication.

We've reached the halfway point of our four-part series in which we break down the top ways HR teams can strengthen the employee benefits experience to differentiate their business in today's competitive labor market. 

Part Three is by far our favorite topic to provide counsel on - how to take advantage of modern benefits administration software to deliver a better benefits experience for your employees.  Leading benefits administration platforms are designed to enhance the employee experience and eliminate paper processes while helping employers highlight available offerings and drive engagement.

However, as with any software, there are a lot of options out there, so it's crucial to define the key capabilities your organization will evaluate when comparing providers. We'll walk you through how to identify these, in the section below. 

Welcome back to our four-part series designed to help you strengthen your benefits experience so you can differentiate your business in today's competitive labor market.

In Part Two, this blog will discuss why goal setting is important and provide examples of key goals you may want to track.

Last week, in Part One, we examined how you could update your benefits strategy by reviewing your existing benefits mix, digging into your current participation data, and examining your past communication plan. If you missed Part One, go back and read it here.

Now, armed with these insights and key pieces of data, you are ready for Part Two: Define Your Goals.

Creating a premium benefits experience is one way companies today can differentiate themselves in a competitive labor market. But too often, benefits selection is treated as an annual event instead of an ongoing and evolving journey.

However, with clear goal-setting, tools designed to meet the needs of modern workers, and a solid strategy for open enrollment communication, you can increase employee satisfaction and loyalty while strengthening your company’s appeal to new candidates. In a tight labor market, that’s exactly the kind of competitive positioning employers need.

With that in mind, join us for part one of a four-part series designed to help you strengthen your benefits experience so you can differentiate your business in today's competitive labor market.

Does your company offer your employees “soft” benefits? You know – those benefits that are a luxury to some, and must-have for upcoming generations growing our workforce.

Research and feedback from your own employees will reveal that the quickest way to build an inclusive culture where your employees can do their best work. More and more employers believe that by being flexible and keeping your employee’s individual lifestyles in mind is at the core of a happy and successful workplace. Thus, many human resources departments have been re-designing their benefits packages to include both traditional and “soft” benefits.

Benefits administration outsourcing has been on the rise for years, and those who outsource benefits administration are also outsourcing other complex HR functions at a similarly rapid pace. For example, among those organizations who outsource, the average number of vendors used ranged from a low of two (for companies with under one hundred employees), to a high of five (for those with more than 1000 employees). The increase in number of vendors used is a telltale sign that employers are looking for a “best-of-breed” technology strategy - one service from different vendors - versus the all-in-one model.

Let's face it; annual enrollment is a busy time, and chances are — you might be playing catch-up. Here's a quick refresher on topics you may have missed on your LinkedIn feed.