When I got into this industry, I knew absolutely nothing about benefits or insurance. I knew I needed vision because my eyes are bad, and I needed to dental to keep my smile clean. Other than that, the idea of facing my benefits offering during open enrollment made me do just the opposite! So, when my employer asked me to write a video script for critical illness insurance on my first day of work, I felt an immense amount of pressure to become an expert overnight. But I’m an adult, so I delivered my project and continued to meet future deadlines all the while juggling “Insurance for Dummies” books I found off of the internet.
After a few months of trying to learn everything there is about employee benefits and insurance, I came to the realization: Nobody will ever know everything there is to learn about employee benefits. Why? The insurance and benefits industries change every day and there will always be a nugget of information out there that will keep you from becoming a “Benefits Guru”. So, now I know there is no end to learning about benefits. And that may sound obvious, but I chose to look at it a different way:
The goal is just to know more than you did yesterday.
Simple as that. It doesn’t matter if I spent 30 seconds or 30 minutes a day reading about the industry. As long as you learned something you didn’t know before, I was on the right path to benefit comprehension!
And if I could relay one piece of advice to employees to help them understand their benefits offering, it’s that you don’t need to learn the ins and outs of every benefit during open enrollment. What’s important is that you have a basic understanding of your and your family’s needs. A non-adventurous parent may not need accident insurance, but their football and baseball scholarship-hunting child might!
Here at MGM Benefits, we’ve built a nice collection of resources that help make learning about benefits easy for employees.
5 Blogs that can help you better understand your benefits:
Benefit Education Is Key Year-Round, Not Just During Open Enrollment
It’s no fun thinking about your employee benefits every year during open enrollment. Coming face-to-face with a slew of scenarios that make you uncomfortable isn’t easy…
Open Enrollment Tips and Tricks That Can Save You Money
Employee benefits save people thousands of dollars every year, and yet nearly everyone treats open enrollment as an afterthought. The pandemic taught us that when…
Swipe Right to Enroll — If Employee Benefits Had Dating Profiles (Part 1)
Everyone. Is. Swiping. Swiping to find friends. Their better halves. You can even swipe right to apply for jobs in certain job recruiter apps, now. And finding…
What If Disability Insurance Was Called “Paycheck Protection”?
Any benefit guru knows the importance of disability insurance. In fact, it should be in the same category as vision, dental, and medical insurance in terms of…
(VIDEO) 4 Benefits You Absolutely Need to Budget For
Trust us, we get it: Open enrollment can be overwhelming. There are dozens of employee benefits to choose from and they’re all useful in their own way…
