It’s that time of year where the majority of Human Resources departments are wrapping up their year-end Employee Benefits plan checklists — confirming compliance, troubleshooting those pesky error logs from the annual enrollment carrier file feeds, and responding to employee payroll and benefits questions.

If you’re an HR professional, understandably, you may be feeling a bit fatigued. But here’s the thing — you can’t let up, especially when it comes to ensuring your employees feel taken care of. Think of it this way, the extra effort now will pay dividends next fall in improved employee engagement!

Take Time Now to Gather Feedback

There’s no time like the present to better understand your employee engagement and how well your benefits investment is being valued. Using surveys and focus groups are great ways post-open enrollment to gather feedback.

Focus groups can help keep the employee benefits conversation going. And the work with the focus groups doesn’t have to be hard. Simply pull together a few small groups with maybe 5-10 employees and frame up the discussion with a few open-ended questions. The questions can be something like this:

• How do you feel this annual enrollment went?
• Are there any ideas about how to make it easier for you to make your benefit decisions?
• What are the most valuable parts of our current employee benefits offerings?
• Do you feel there are missing elements in the options offered to you?
• Have you heard about interesting employee benefits offerings from others that we should consider?
• What did you enjoy most about this year’s annual enrollment?

Respond to Employee Feedback

Once you collect this information, it’s important to be responsive and act timely. No one wants to give feedback that goes unheard.

So, consider using the next few months to:

• evaluate your coverage choices
• follow up with your participants
• empower them to be ambassadors of your total rewards messaging

It’s also smart to give them the support and the information they need to help grow the overall recognition and appreciation of your employee benefits offering.

While you’re not likely to change your employee benefits options right away, you can use their feedback to craft a communications plan about your current offering. In those communications, you can find specific items you have today and focus messaging on those elements that your focus group voiced the need to support.

In the end, using this time to gather direct feedback will position you to release proactive communications in the new year and allow you the opportunity to show your employees you value their voice.

If you have any questions, we’d be happy to chat with you. The biggest key is don’t let up now. In a tough market when you may be competing against other employers for talent, employee engagement is crucial.