Creating a step-by-step health insurance enrollment timeline for small businesses and startups

Navigating the health insurance enrollment process can be daunting, especially for small HR teams. However, a well-structured pre-enrollment, enrollment, and post-enrollment strategy is essential to ensure employees understand their options and feel supported. 

This blog post outlines key steps to streamline enrollment, including employee education before enrollment begins and providing clear timelines and ongoing support afterward. By implementing effective communication strategies and educational resources, your HR team can help employees make informed decisions about their healthcare coverage, ultimately enhancing their satisfaction and retention. 

With enough upfront work and planning, HR professionals in charge of benefits administration can alleviate some of the stress during enrollment, minimizing the burden and stress that often comes during enrollment. 

First, how do I determine the start and end dates for the enrollment period?

Align your organization's timeline with national or state guidelines to determine the start and end dates for the enrollment period. Typically, the open enrollment period runs from November 1 to January 15 each year, but dates may vary by state, so it's essential to verify your state's specific deadlines. Activating an accessible enrollment period allows employees adequate time to research and select the best plans suited to their needs. 

Moreover, consider how company-specific factors, such as your fiscal year or operational calendar, might influence or require adjustments to these dates. Understanding the unique characteristics of your employee population can aid in scheduling a timeline that maximizes participation and satisfaction. 

Finally, if special circumstances arise — like those triggered by qualifying life events such as marriage, having a child, or job changes — your employees may be able to modify their healthcare elections mid-year through a Special Enrollment Period. These ensure employees have ample opportunity to update their coverage in response to significant life changes. Tailoring your enrollment plan to accommodate these potential occurrences can enhance the enrollment process, making it inclusive and accommodating for all employees.

Pre-enrollment period

Having a smooth pre-enrollment process ensures a timely and less confusing enrollment. This requires a fair amount of prep for company HR departments for larger organizations but can fall to a single person in the case of health insurance for startups. Here's what you can do to prepare your organization through pre-enrollment

Educating employees

Employee education is one of the most essential components of the pre-enrollment period. From understanding the enrollment process to teaching to budgeting for health insurance premiums, the more education an HR team can do upfront, the smoother the enrollment process and beyond.

This means giving them adequate time to consider the new available plans and benefits. Consider creating some or all of the following: 

• Posters and brochures to post in gathering spaces or hand out if the organization is in office

• An online FAQ page  on the company ethernet to get employees started thinking about enrollment

• An internal email marketing campaign that offers small pieces of actionable advice leading up to the enrollment period  

Informational sessions

In addition to having documentation available to employees during pre-enrollment, it's important to create educational sessions for employees. 

Consider scheduling meetings with different teams or offices to give them an idea of the enrollment process. If your team is remote, you can opt for online webinars that can be recorded and shared across teams, time zones, and locations. 

These informational sessions should include information about the available plans and the enrollment process and plenty of time for Q&A segments to address employee concerns. Consider hosting multiple information sessions during different times and dates so employees have more options to attend. If budgeting allows, hold the sessions over a catered in-office lunch to encourage high attendance. 

The informational sessions aim to prepare employees to help make their decisions. These sessions should be a starting point for them, a way to help them think about what their coverage looks like now and what changes they want to make. When enrollment begins, it should eliminate any question from their minds about plans that work best for them.

Collecting necessary documents

When enrollment begins, one of the biggest challenges for your employees will be finding the proper documentation to enroll in the healthcare plan. You can alleviate that headache by clearly communicating what documentation will be necessary for employees to enroll in healthcare coverage 

Common documentation and information often required for healthcare enrollment include:

• Yearly income estimate

• Documentation of immigration status

• Proof of citizenship

• Documentation proving date of birth

• Social Security card or other evidence of SSN

• Proof of home address

• Proof of child or parental care (if obtaining insurance for them)

Sharing what documentation may be required to enroll can be part of the education and informational sessions. Remember, it can take time for employees to gather the proper documentation. Make sure the timeline accounts for this window. 

Enrollment period

Education and understanding are important parts of pre-enrollment. Still, during enrollment, your key goal will be keeping employees on task and on a timeline to ensure they enroll before the end of the enrollment period. 

Continue to communicate timelines and expectations clearly to employees before and during the enrollment period. Ensure they understand the start and end dates for enrollment long before the period begins.

In addition to clearly outlining the start and end dates of enrollment, highlight any deadlines for plan selection within that timeline. It can also be helpful to give employees an idea of how long each task during the enrollment period takes so they can plan out each step accordingly, without a rush of employee support required towards the end of the period.

Reminders for employees

Another important strategy to keep enrollment within the timeline is to send out regular and varied reminders to employees. Consider printed materials for office spaces, email campaigns for remote teams, and calendar invites to remind employees of looming deadlines. Depending on the size of your team, some strategies may be better suited to offices of different sizes. 

Support during enrollment

Communication of clear timelines and ongoing reminders will be an important part of the enrollment strategy, but in addition, the HR team must make themselves available for questions as employees go through the enrollment process. A solid pre-enrollment strategy should help answer many employee questions. It's often only when they get into the enrollment process that questions crop up for employees.

Consider instituting office hours for HR professionals within the office or hosting scheduled periods to work on enrollment as a team. Offering these resources can help alleviate issues towards the end of the enrollment. 

Post-enrollment period

Confirming that new or inexperienced employees have enrolled in the healthcare program will go a long way toward alleviating concerns and anxieties post-enrollment. Make sure that you communicate to employees that they have successfully been onboarded into their healthcare plan. 

While HR professionals plan for everything to go smoothly, there are often situations out of their control. To plan ahead for these issues, consider setting up troubleshooting documentation to help employees if there are discrepancies in their coverage or errors in enrollment. 

While the enrollment period may be over, it's important to consider offering ongoing support and resources to employees. That includes information on Special Enrollment Periods, Qualifying Life Events, and other instances where employees may switch healthcare coverage mid-year. 

Healthcare is a major benefit for many employees and sometimes a reason for them to stay or leave a company. Post enrollment, it's important to continue communicating with employees about how they can get the most out of their health care. When employees feel like they're cared for, satisfaction increases, and companies can expect higher retention rates for employees. Consider holding regular discussions for employee health and wellness programs to help employees get the most out of their selected healthcare. 

Enrollment made easier with Thatch

Administering benefits to a growing team can be stressful for overburdened HR professionals at growing companies. But you don’t have to manage these programs on your own. 

If your company is considering ICHRA, let Thatch help. Thatch makes it easy to give your employees great healthcare. Reach out today to learn more.