Too Much Information

Have your notices concerning the new Health Insurance Marketplace been sent out yet?  If not, you have a whopping 11 more days to distribute them!!

Things like this make me nervous.  I hate sending out information to our employees that they 1) are not going to understand and 2) will freak out over because they think we’re messing with their health insurance.  Unfortunately, this also falls during Open Enrollment for me.  Our new insurance starts on Oct 1… and no decisions have been made yet.  None.  We don’t know what we’re going to do.  So the employees are unsure about their medical plans, I have two pregnant employees who are literally due any day now, and I have no answers for them regarding their benefits.  Now I have to send out a notice about the Marketplace and confuse them even more.  

Regardless, the notice is required by law so I’m sending it out.  Key points for minimizing the damage to be done:

• I’m warning them it’s coming out.  I will be distributing the notice with their pay stubs tomorrow, so today I will send out a company-wide e-mail letting them know it’s a required notice but it has absolutely NO BEARING on our renewal and we are NOT suggesting everyone goes to get their own plan.
• They freak out anyway.  The e-mail will cause a frenzy, so I have dedicated time today to speak with everyone and unruffle feathers.  I realize in a large company this is absolutely not possible (I only have about 48 employees to unruffle).  In that case I would have met with the managers.  Stolen ten minutes out of the last managerial staff meeting to explain that this notice is coming out but it doesn’t change our employee benefits.
• Stress that it is important information, but no action is required.  It’s not critical to them to understand exactly how the Marketplace works or to research every plan out there.  If they’re happy with our benefits, then they can stay with our plan and no surprise penalties are in store for them.  There are some who will want to research every minute detail, but that’s on them.  A good chunk will just want reassurance that they don’t actually have to go to the Marketplace.

Anything the employees don’t understand is scary.  Throwing too much information at them is a dangerous thing.  No matter how long your company has been around, everyone feels instability during the economic recovery.  HR is the Change Agent that needs to do everything they can to make transitions seamless and easy.  My philosophy is this: be extremely knowledgeable.  Know everything you can about changes and be ready to answer questions.  Those who need reassurance will be comforted by your confidence and those who want the research will be happy you know your stuff.  We are changing lives by making changes easier.