The enrollment period can be a daunting time for both employers and employees.

It’s a lot of work for companies and can be confusing for workers. If, for example, you have 500 employees and offer 10 benefit plans with several documents associated with each plan, you might have to sift through as many as 20,000 documents during open enrollment. By using technology-based enrollment, however, you could save time and money and make the process more efficient and user-friendly for your employees and human resource department.

Here’s a look at some of the advantages and disadvantages of technology-based enrollment.

First, the advantages: 

Every step of the benefits management process is automated, eliminating the need for paper-based processes and improving efficiency and accuracy. 

Online enrollment lowers the overall cost of providing services to your employees by eliminating the costs of distributing and collecting paper enrollment packets. 

Online enrollment shortens the enrollment cycle. 

Online enrollment enables employees to self-enroll in benefit programs, review their benefit data and report life event changes. 

Employees can choose plans based on eligibility criteria and compare costs and coverage of previous elections against new offerings. 

Elections can be automatically applied to employee records. 

Employees receive written confirmations detailing their elections. 

Employees can easily view and update their records and plans. 

HR can check the status of enrollment in real time and could be able to generate detailed reports regarding the cost of employee benefits. 

Now, some of the disadvantages: 

Employees could be intimidated by the software and prefer personal assistance rather than making their selections on a computer. 

Employees might not make informed benefit decisions if they’re only advised through the computer and not provided personalized recommendations. 

My recommendations:

Introduce new enrollment software and train employees before open enrollment begins. Use various communication mediums for initial alerts concerning open enrollment to prepare employees for the process. 

Use existing resources to promote technology based enrollment, including your company’s intranet, bulletin board postings and newsletter. 

Encourage management to promote the use of technology based enrollment to increase employee buy-in. 

Establish online communities or blogs where employees can discuss successes and problems they encounter while enrolling. That way, they can assist one another with the process and HR can address any problems employees experience.