With Annual Benefits Open Enrollment season rapidly approaching in the US, human resources and benefits professionals have started to plan, prepare, and develop their set of materials, communications, and tools to help their employees navigate through what can be a complex and confusing collection of plans, features, costs, and even tax implications.
Absent life changing events like marriage or birth or adoption of a child, open enrollment is the only scheduled opportunity for employees to re-evaluate and potentially change their choice of medical, insurance, and other company sponsored benefit plans. Most organizations prepare some kind of annual open enrollment package, or update the company intranet with information and perhaps even some tools like downloadable worksheets or online calculators to assist employees in the process of evaluating their known and anticipated needs against the available choices to help guide them to make what is hopefully the ‘best’ choice for their circumstances.
But still these resources often are overlooked, can be ignored, or themselves are almost as complex as the plans and options they are trying to explain. Sometimes trying to make sense out of complicated and detailed plan offerings is beyond the capability of traditional methods of communication.
The folks at Jellyvision Lab, the company most well know for the fun and popular series of video-based trivia games called ‘You Don’t Know Jack’, have developed an interesting and really fun, interactive tool to try and make benefits plans more easily understood, and to help employee make more appropriate decisions about their benefits.
Their product, called the Jellyvision Benefits Counselor, is an interactive video tour and guide of your company’s benefit offerings, a configurable resource for information and employee decision support, and a fun and innovative way to help employees learn and make the ‘best decision for their needs.
Check out the video below to learn more about how the Benefits Counselor works:
Behind the interactive video is an administrative process where the company’s benefits staff configures the Counselor with the relevant information about plan design, specific benefits, company policies, etc. (see a portion in the image at right) and a sophisticated process flow for the counselor is developed
based on this design, and employee choices provided as they interact with the Counselor. Standard explanations of the generic tax benefits of Flexible and Health Savings accounts also provide a simple and clear set of guidelines for employees.
For larger organizations that may have a complex set of plans to administer, and lots of employees needing advice, deploying the Jellyvision Benefits Counselor as part of the overall benefits open enrollment communications can lend an element of interactivity, fun, and interest to a process that many employees find difficult and confusing.
What do you think - would an interactive, video game style tool help your staff understand more and make better decisions about their benefits?
Thanks to Harry Gottlieb from Jellyvision for taking some time last week to talk with me about the Jellyvision Benefits Counselor.