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Here's How to Get Your Employees to Use Their Benefits as You Head into Open Enrollment 2026
The short version: Getting employees to use their benefits during open enrollment comes down to picking the right play for your workforce. If your people are desk-based and already on email, build one required step into enrollment, like a Member app login, that turns attention into real usage. If a real share of your workforce isn't reachable by email, skip the inbox and reach them with QR codes, print materials and messaging in the languages they speak. If you're launching a new program with no existing habit yet, stage your incentive across the whole enrollment window instead of spending it all upfront. All three are working for Medefy clients this season, none requires new budget, and most teams will need more than one.
Key takeaways
If you're running open enrollment 2026, you know the drill. Plan changes to explain, deadlines to enforce, a flood of employee questions, and a workforce tuning most of it out by the second reminder email. It's one of the busiest, least thanked stretches of your year.
It's also the one moment when your employees are already paying attention to their benefits. That makes it the best chance you'll get all year to drive real usage, not only a complete enrollment form. The gap between "employees enrolled" and "employees using what they enrolled in" is where most of your program's value quietly disappears. Closing it doesn't take a bigger budget or a longer campaign. It takes the right play for your workforce, and there isn't only one. Here's what you can do.
Three distinct plays
Each of these three plays solved a different friction point. All of them are built around getting your employees to open the Member app and keep coming back to it.
- None requires new budget.
- Each is proven by a Medefy client running it this season.
- The right play depends on your workforce's shape: desk-based and email-reachable, frontline and multilingual, or a brand-new program with no existing habit yet.
All three are covered in full depth, with step-by-step instructions for running each one yourself, in the OE Playbook.
Play 1: Make one step required
Centralize your plan information somewhere your employees already trust. Then build one required step into enrollment, something as simple as an updated consent form, that only lives inside the Member app. Send every communication about it under your own name and domain, not a vendor's, so it reads as coming from you and not from a platform your employees don't recognize.
One Medefy client did exactly this. A Tulsa-based nonprofit with 600+ employees made one enrollment step required inside the Member app. For a large share of their workforce, that was the first time they'd ever downloaded it or logged in, the two hurdles that usually stall adoption before it starts. The result: a 63% increase in registrations.
Use this if your workforce is desk-based and reachable by email. It works by borrowing the urgency open enrollment already gives you, not by creating new attention from scratch.
Play 2: Meet them beyond the inbox
If a meaningful share of your workforce doesn't run on email, stop competing for inbox attention and go where they are. Think QR codes on paycheck stuffers, breakroom and office graphics, and materials in the languages your employees speak.
One Medefy client, a national food manufacturer with a distributed frontline workforce, did this and skipped email pushes entirely. The paycheck stuffers alone drove a 10 to 12% adoption lift.
Use this if your workforce is frontline, multi-site or multilingual, anywhere a meaningful share of your employees don't reliably open a company inbox.
Play 3: Stage your incentive, don't front-load it
If you're building a habit from zero, a new program with no existing usage to build on, don't spend your entire incentive budget in week one. Stage it across the full enrollment window instead, including one moment tied to a live event your employees already attend.
One Medefy client, an Austin-based fintech company with 2,500+ employees worldwide, had no existing app habit to build on at all. They ran a series of prize drawings across their enrollment window, including one timed to a benefits fair. Within days of rollout, adoption approached 1 in 5 employees.
Use this if you're launching a new program, one still building its first habit, where sustained incentive matters more than a single moment of urgency.
You probably need more than one
These plays aren't mutually exclusive, and your strongest open enrollment will probably combine more than one. Require one step to get people in the door. Reach beyond email so your message doesn't stop at whoever reads their inbox closely. Time an incentive to keep momentum going once your first push fades. None of these is waiting on next year's cycle. You can put any of them in place this season.
What's your team up against?
Your biggest hurdle might be one of these three. It might be something else entirely: legacy systems, thin HR bandwidth, or an executive team that hasn't bought in. We'd like to hear which of these is closest to what you're working through this season, or what's not on this list at all.
Open enrollment is the one point in the year when your employees are already paying attention to their benefits.
Get the OE Playbook for the full breakdown of all three plays, including exactly how to run each one with your own team.
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