It might be hard to believe, but the time to start preparing employees for open enrollment is now, long before the deadline, in the brief moments your employees might still be around the office between their summer vacations. Video communications can help.
Open enrollment might be a strange beast this year with pending legal and government initiatives floating around out there. All the more reason to start gathering and presenting as much information as possible to your employees about their healthcare options.
I can’t create an encyclopedia of every company’s healthcare plans and how they’ll be affected by this year’s uncertain open enrollment period, but I can recommend video communications as a way to impart crucial information to your employees about their health insurance coverage and other benefits. And I can tell you to start putting this information together now.
No Mandate in 2019
There will be no individual mandate for healthcare coverage in 2019. For your employees, that means that a) they won’t be subject to a fine on their next tax bill if they don’t sign up for healthcare coverage, and b) premiums could be much higher for everyone else signing up on the open exchange.
Different companies procure different healthcare options for their employees. If your company merely subsidizes your employee’s healthcare costs over the open exchange, those subsidizing costs could rise. Costs for company health insurance could rise for employers, too. The time to start answering these kinds of questions for your employees starts now, before they start getting asked. Video communications can start to outline your employees’ healthcare options.
Of course, you and health insurance industry insiders probably don’t have answers to your employees questions because no one really knows how exactly the repeal of the individual mandate will affect premiums and other health insurance costs. But anticipating these questions and at least looking into different health care insurance coverages is still advantageous at this point.
Video Communications and Open Enrollment
The time to start producing your video content and information packets for your employees is now. The more information you can make available to your employees over the summer, the less stress they’ll feel when open enrollment finally rolls around in the late fall. Consider the political turmoil and the attention healthcare will get in the months leading up to open enrollment, which is right around the same time of what will be a cacophonous national midterm election season.
People will be nervous about their healthcare coverage. Your employees might not need all the details of your company’s healthcare insurance options today, but they’ll be glad to have it when the summer comes to an end.
Static videos and ongoing web series bring the information home for employees. Fun videos may never replace the information packets and fine print on health insurance forms, but they can impart the basic information to all your employees at once, calming them down, letting them make good decisions, and presenting information that is easily understood and retained.
