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13 Survey Questions to Ask After Open Enrollment [+ Free Google Form Template]

Ross Simons

Ross Simons

Director of Inbound Marketing

An estimated 25% of employees have quit (or will quit) their jobs in 2021. This number may rise even further in 2022.

You know that feeling when you finish up open enrollment, and employees were engaged, but you don’t know if they actually liked what your benefits package had to offer? 

A lot of employees won’t share their frustrations with their benefits options. Instead, they’ll talk to their coworkers to commiserate and see if others agree. This can lead to further dissatisfaction and, ultimately, may lead them to look for another job. 

That can be a dangerous spot to be in, especially in the era of “The Great Resignation,” where more than a quarter of employees are expected to quit in 2021 alone. Employees feel more empowered than ever to leave jobs, and, after the COVID-19 pandemic, they feel resilient enough to take the plunge. 

It’s extremely important to have a formal post-OE survey process

If you’re not getting employee feedback shortly after OE, you’re missing an opportunity to show your employees you care. Here are a few other good reasons why you should survey:

  • You need to collect feedback. This data will help you make informed decisions in the coming year and reduce turnover. 
  • Response rates will be highest immediately after open enrollment.
  • The data will be more useful as employees will remember precisely what they did/didn’t like about their benefits package or the enrollment process.

Surveying now will give you more responses, better responses, and more actionable data. 

Thirteen Questions to Include On Your Post-OE Survey

Below are 13 questions you should include in your post-OE survey. You may remove some or add a few of your own, but this is a good starting point. Want to send this to your employees? Just click here to get these questions in a ready-to-send Google Form.

Section 1: Questions About Their Benefits Options

These questions are focused on getting a lay of the land. Do they like their benefits options or not?

1. How satisfied are you with your benefits?

☐ Very dissatisfied

☐ Somewhat dissatisfied

☐ Neutral

☐ Somewhat satisfied

☐ Very satisfied

2. On a scale of 1 to 10, how would you rate your chosen health insurance plan?

☐ 1 – Poor

[…]

☐ 10 – Excellent

3. How would you say your benefits compare with other companies?

☐ Much worse 

☐ A little worse

☐ About the same

☐ A little better

☐ Much better

Want to send these questions?

Click here to request your own Google Form. We’ll set it up for you and add you as an editor.

Section 2: Questions About the Benefits-Enrollment Experience

These questions are meant to assess the enrollment experience. Do your employees feel like they were able to make informed decisions, knew how to enroll, and who to speak with if they had questions?

4. How would you rate the overall benefits-enrollment experience?

☐ 1 – Poor

[…]

☐ 10 – Excellent

5. Did you have enough information and guidance (tools) to make an informed decision?

☐ Yes

☐ No

What would have helped you make a more informed decision? 

				
					Enter your answer here...
				
			

6. Was the benefits enrollment portal easy to use and personalized?

☐ Yes

☐ No

7. Did you feel the open enrollment window was long enough?

☐ Yes

☐ No

8. How confident do you feel that you understood the benefits plan information that was presented to you during open enrollment?

☐ Very confident

☐ Somewhat confident

☐ Not confident

9. Did you know who to contact with additional questions or concerns?

☐ Yes

☐ No

10. Would you like to receive communications/educational materials throughout the year so you have a better understanding when OE comes?

☐ Yes

☐ No 

Section 3: Questions About Improving for Next Year

These questions are focused on understanding how you can provide better options next year.

11. If you could make one change to your plans next year, what would it be?

☐ More Options

☐ Better Options

☐ Cheaper Options

☐ Other

12. What could HR have done better during open enrollment?

				
					Enter your answer here...
				
			

13. Are you interested in any of the following benefits? (check all that apply)

☐ Accident insurance
☐ Adoption/surrogacy assistance
☐ Cancer assistance
☐ Childcare benefits
☐ Critical illness insurance
☐ Dental insurance
☐ Diabetes-management assistance
☐ Disability insurance (long and short term)
☐ Employee assistance program
☐ Employee perks and discounts
☐ Fertility benefits
☐ Flexible work schedules
☐ Gym memberships or discounts
☐ Healthcare spending or reimbursement accounts (HSA, FSA, HRA, etc.)
☐ Hospital indemnity insurance
☐ Life and AD&D insurance
☐ Maternity/paternity leave
☐ Mental health support
☐ Pet insurance
☐ Pharmacy cost-management program
☐ Relocation assistance
☐ Retirement accounts or contributions
☐ Student-loan repayment
☐ Telecommuting options
☐ Telemedicine
☐ Transportation FSA or transportation assistance
☐ Tuition reimbursement
☐ Vision insurance
☐ Wellness programs
☐ Other

How to Get a Better Response Rate on Your Open Enrollment Surveys

It’s pointless to send a survey that doesn’t get responses. That’s partly why it’s so important to send it shortly after open enrollment: you get more responses. But there are some other tried-and-true ways to improve the response rate.

  1. Promise transparency. Explain how you will use the data and how you will provide access to the results. Employees will be more likely to take the survey if they know they’ll be able to see how others responded.
  2. Promote with visual content. Don’t just send another email to their email inboxes. Break through the clutter with something visual, like a Digital Postcard
  3. Provide anonymity. Your employees may worry about responding if they think it’ll impact them negatively.
  4. Incentivize them to respond. You can either offer a small benefit to everyone (“$5 Starbucks gift card to everyone who responds”) or a larger raffle prize to all who complete the survey such as a $200 Amazon gift card. For this, you’ll need to have them “opt in” to the raffle by providing their email addresses with their submissions.
  5. Communicate early, often, across multiple channels. Don’t just send an email and hope for the best. To increase your response rate, you need multiple touchpoints. Not only that, but you need to try multiple channels — email, text, 1:1 outreach and maybe even print communication in common areas to maximize awareness.

What is a digital postcard?

A Digital Postcard is similar to a regular postcard, except it comes in a digital format. It’s a simple concept, but going digital opens the door to new options for on-demand content creation, distribution, and reporting.

Learn more →

How to Best Use These Questions

So how can you actually take these questions and use them to create a high-performing survey? 

Good

Use our survey template on Google Forms. Fill out the form and we’ll create the survey for you and add you as an editor. From there, you can do a bit of rebranding and modify the questions. 

Just keep in mind that the Google Forms tool is very basic and can feel a little amateur to employees. But this option is fast and easy!

Better

Take these survey questions and import them into your own survey tool, whether that’s Survey Monkey, Qualtrics, or some other platform. Your survey will look a lot more professional, and it’ll be custom branded with your own styles.

Best

Partner with Flimp. We’ll help you refine questions and send visual omnichannel communications that will improve engagement and response rate. We’ll use the same process that gets over 70% employee engagement during open enrollment. 

Click here to contact us and get started 

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