Employer open enrollment prep fares poorly in March

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Employers with benefit slated to start Q1 of 2018 lost some ground last month, according to Employee Benefit Adviser’s Open Enrollment Readiness Benchmark survey.

The composite OERB score for this group, which represents nearly 70% of all employers, dropped three points in March to an overall readi­ness level of 41. Worse, the number of activi­ty-related red flags, which signal a significant lack of preparedness, rose from 7 to 10, while the number of green flags indicating a solid state of readiness fell from three to two. The biggest setbacks concerned the open enrollment man­agement and post-enrollment analysis phases—which shed five and six points, respectively, from the previous month.

To calculate the benchmark, employers of all sizes are asked to rate their progress for each of 26 distinct activities on a scale of 1 to 100, with a score of 100 indicating that the employer considers itself fully prepared for that activity. The individual scores are then combined to produce readiness scores for the four distinct phases of benefits enrollment preparation: benefit plan design, employee preparation, enrollment management and post-enrollment analysis. The scores for all four phases are then averaged to determine the overall readiness score for that month.

For more open enrollment data and analysis, download the PDF at the top of the page.

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