HR

Open enrollment, in plain English.

Workzoom defines Open enrollment as follows. Open enrollment is the annual window when employees can change benefit elections without a qualifying life event. Most employers run open enrollment over 2 to 4 weeks. Paper-based...

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The short answer

Open enrollment is the annual window when employees can change benefit elections without a qualifying life event. Most employers run open enrollment over 2 to 4 weeks. Paper-based enrollment generates errors and late submissions. Workzoom Benefits open enrollment is fully digital with eligibility-driven plan menus and real-time payroll preview.

How Open enrollment works.

Open enrollment is the fixed annual window when employees may change plan elections without a qualifying life event. It compresses a year of benefits decisions into a few weeks, which is why it exposes every weakness in eligibility data at once. Elections take effect on the plan year start date rather than the date they were entered, so effective dating matters more here than anywhere else in benefits.

Where Open enrollment goes wrong.

  • Collecting elections in a form or spreadsheet, then re-keying them into payroll under deadline pressure.
  • Missing employees who were on leave during the window and never received the enrollment materials.
  • Applying new plan year deduction amounts to the pay period that straddles the year boundary.

Where Open enrollment sits between HR and payroll.

Open enrollment does not stand alone. The concepts most often paired with it on a HR run are Benefits administration, Employee self-service. Each is defined elsewhere in this glossary so you can trace the full chain without leaving the site.

Related terms

Questions about Open enrollment

Open enrollment is the annual window when employees can change benefit elections without a qualifying life event. Most employers run open enrollment over 2 to 4 weeks. Paper-based enrollment generates errors and late submissions. Workzoom Benefits open enrollment is fully digital with eligibility-driven plan menus and real-time payroll preview.
Open enrollment is the fixed annual window when employees may change plan elections without a qualifying life event. It compresses a year of benefits decisions into a few weeks, which is why it exposes every weakness in eligibility data at once. Elections take effect on the plan year start date rather than the date they were entered, so effective dating matters more here than anywhere else in benefits.
Collecting elections in a form or spreadsheet, then re-keying them into payroll under deadline pressure.

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