Whether you head out a month early or a few days before the deadline, group benefits meetings are an important event for your groups. These meetings play a crucial part in helping individuals sign up for their insurance, but these affairs don’t have to be a “get in, get out” type of deal. Here are some ways that you can expand the goals of a group benefits meeting to make it more valuable for you and your groups.
Promote Extra Services
Medical insurance may be the top priority for group members, but it doesn’t have to be the only type of insurance discussed during a group benefits meeting. These meetings are a great time to help explain the various options available for employees, which includes a litany of ancillary benefits. While dental and vision are typical selections, a face-to-face meeting with employees can help you educate them about the potential need for products like long-term disability, short-term disability, critical illness and more. You can also base your suggestions off the type of employees that you’ll meet. For example, a group made up of manual laborers should be more interested in products like accidental death and dismemberment coverage. If a group is mostly women, short-term disability and other products that could help during maternity leave could be very intriguing. Not only can these ancillary products help these groups, they can benefit you in the process.
Explain Technology
Group benefits meetings are an opportunity to educate groups about more than just plan options. If you’ve switched over to health insurance quoting and online enrollment software, you can use some of this time to hold a demo and teach them about the benefits of using technology instead of paper. By doing this in person, group members will be more likely to remember how to use your software to make plans selections and review their benefits, costs, price comparisons, deductibles and more. These meetings also allow you to discuss the security of sensitive information. While employees who used to work with paper may be concerned about submitting personal information online, transferring and storing this data through software can be more secure than traditional methods. For example, FormFire’s software is regularly audited by third-party security partners and compliant with the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) and the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health Act (HITECH). This means that employees still control and own their data and that it’s only seen by their Broker and the underwriters who need it to determine plan costs.
Grow Relationship
While it’s great to educate people and promote additional services, it’s important to remember that group benefit meetings are also a way to build a connection with your groups. Face-to-face meetings can help you grow your relationship with a group and make sure that group members know that you’re actively working to help them. The last thing a group wants is to feel forgotten. The more effort you put in to establish a connection, the less likely it is that a group will decide to move on to a different Broker. Take Group benefits meetings should feel like more than just an hour presentation. Give people the chance to meet with you and ask questions. This individualized time can help create a connection that will make them think of you as more than just another vendor who wants to get paid. In the end, personalized service can make a big difference when it comes time to retain your services.
Want to make benefits management quicker, easier and more attractive for small groups? FormFire can help. Request a demo today to see how FormFire’s suite of professional tools can help you simplify the quoting process and set yourself apart from other Brokers.