It’s March. An employee is standing in my doorway holding a bill from the hospital. Their kid broke an arm over the weekend, and they just found out what their deductible actually is.
“I didn’t know,” they say. “I just picked the one that took the least out of my check.”
They weren’t careless. They did exactly what most people do in November. They opened the enrollment screen, saw a handful of plans, three coverage tiers, and a page of acronyms, and picked the one with the smallest number next to it. Then they clicked submit and went back to work.
I’ve had some version of that conversation more times than I can count. And every time, the problem wasn’t the employee. It was how we asked them to choose.
We hand people a document and call it communication
Here’s how open enrollment usually goes. The plans renew. The broker sends over the plan summaries. HR builds a guide, sends an email with the guide attached, maybe holds a lunch-and-learn that a dozen people attend, and opens the enrollment window for a couple of weeks. A lot of people let last year’s elections roll over without looking. The ones who do look get a long PDF.
Then we’re surprised when people don’t understand what they have.
A plan summary isn’t communication. It’s a reference document. It answers every question nobody is asking and buries the three they are: How much will this cost me? Can I keep my doctor? What happens if something big goes wrong?
It costs more than you think
When people don’t understand their benefits, everybody pays for it. Some employees overpay all year for coverage they never use. Others go thin to save a few dollars a paycheck and end up with a bill they can’t handle, and that stress walks into work with them. HR spends January untangling coverage questions that should have been answered in November.
And for most employers, benefits are one of the biggest costs after payroll. If your people can’t explain what you’re giving them, you’re not getting credit for it. You’re paying for a benefit and getting a line on a list.
What actually helps
- Lead with the decision, not the plan. Start with situations people recognize. “If you rarely see a doctor.” “If you’re expecting a baby or have a surgery planned.” “If your spouse has coverage through their own job.” Then show what a year would cost under each plan, premiums plus what they’d pay out of pocket, not just the deduction from each paycheck.
- Say it in plain language, once, in one place. One page per plan. Define deductible, out-of-pocket maximum, and HSA in a sentence each. If it takes a paragraph to explain, people won’t read it.
- Make the enrollment screen do some of the work. Whether you’re in Workday, ADP, Dayforce, BambooHR, or something else, the enrollment experience can usually show cost per paycheck and per year, link to your one-pagers, and hide plans an employee isn’t eligible for. If your screen still shows internal plan codes, that’s a setup problem, not an employee problem. Walk through it yourself as an employee before the window opens.
- Give managers talking points. People ask their manager before they ask HR. A short note covering what changed, where to get help, and when the deadline is goes a long way.
- Don’t make November the only time you talk about benefits. Remind people during the year how to find an in-network provider, what to do when they get married or have a baby, and what their HSA or FSA can actually pay for. Those are the moments people need it.
- Look at what happened afterward. How many people actively chose a plan instead of rolling over? How many coverage questions did HR get in January? Those numbers tell you whether people understood, or just clicked submit.
The point
A benefit only works if people understand it well enough to use it. Most employees aren’t confused because they didn’t try. They’re confused because we gave them a document when they needed a decision.
So before you send this year’s guide, ask one question. Could a new hire read this and pick the right plan for their family in ten minutes? If the answer is no, that’s your starting point.