Post Open Enrollment: The Importance of Employee Feedback

With annual open enrollment periods recently closed for many organizations, now is an ideal time to gain feedback and insights into how your employees felt about their overall enrollment experience and the benefits being offered to them for 2025. By conducting employee surveys, organizations can gain valuable data on how their organization feels about the overall benefits plan offerings and provide a reasonable business case for any potential future changes based on survey findings.

Types of Surveys

Employee surveys can foster further discussions concerning how to increase employee satisfaction with an organization. The type of survey executed will depend heavily on the needs of the organization and the type of information sought after. For many, open enrollment periods have just concluded, and employee benefits plans are fresh in employees' minds, making it the perfect time to survey employee populations on their benefits needs and satisfactions with the open enrollment experience.

Conducting an Effective Survey

The communications surrounding surveys are just as important as they survey itself. Letting employees know well ahead of time that you will be conducting a survey demonstrates that the organization values employee feedback and wants to provide avenues for employee opinion to shape their experience. Here are some tips on how to conduct a successful survey:

• Use emails, bulletin boards, intranets and company newsletters to communicate the upcoming survey to your employees.
• Ensure that all responses will be kept anonymous to receive honest from your employees.
• Establish clear expectations for your employees regarding their responses. Do not assure that you can make all the changes that they suggest, but insist that you will make earnest efforts to accommodate their requests if they are feasible.
• Ask for specific examples when questioning employees. This will help you get to the root of problems or concerns.
• Do not get offended by off-putting comments. Instead, use this information to make positive changes to your organization.
• If there are multiple employees making the same recommendation, it may be time to look closely at that issue and evaluate the opportunity for improvement.
• Provide the results of the survey to your employees.

Closing the Feedback Loop

It is also important to close the loop on any requested feedback that is gathered from the employees. By sharing the overall sentiment and plans of action the organization plans to make after reviewing the data, the organization promotes transparency and helps ensure that employees feel heard. Seeing an employer take action with the feedback provided will communicate to the organization that their employer is actively working to ensure that the benefits plans they're providing are meeting the needs of their unique population.

According to Qualtrics, organizations who leverage the feedback they receive from their employees:

• Benefit from more engaged workforces, which boosts performance and overall team morale.
• Realize revenue growth to the tune of up to 400% due to enhanced workplace productivity and culture.
• See a reduction in turnover costs as a result of increased employee satisfaction

Keeping the lines of communication open with employees is crucial for a prosperous working environment. By engaging your employees through feedback, you are allowing them to assist in implementing necessary changes for the benefit of everyone at your organization.

For more support on how your organization can ensure employee feedback in incorporated into your employee benefits plan design, reach out to the AssuredPartners team.