Open Enrollment & Benefits Campaign
Role: Communications Lead, Campaign Strategy & Execution
Led planning, messaging strategy, and execution for a multi-phase Open Enrollment and benefits communications campaign supporting a company-wide enrollment process, with tailored messaging for salaried employees, craft employees, jobsite administrators, and executive leadership.
Role
Communications lead, content strategist
Timeline
Annual
Audience
All employees and their spouses.
Deliverables
Campaign messaging and assets, email communications, intranet content, enrollment resources
Overview
Open Enrollment is a recurring, high-impact enterprise communications effort where clarity, consistency, and timing directly influence employee decision-making and organizational trust. The campaign required a disciplined communications strategy that balanced regulatory requirements with accessible, human-centered messaging across a diverse workforce.
I was responsible for leading the communications strategy and execution for the company-wide Open Enrollment initiative, ensuring employees understood their benefit options, key deadlines, and required actions while enabling leadership to participate confidently and consistently across channels.
The work focused on designing a structured, repeatable communications framework that reduced confusion, minimized last-minute questions, and improved overall engagement. This approach emphasized message hierarchy, audience segmentation, and channel discipline to ensure critical information reached the right audiences at the right time.
Strategic Communications Judgement
The central challenge was communicating mandatory, high-stakes information without overwhelming employees or contributing to decision fatigue. Benefits communications often involve dense, compliance-driven content, and the risk was that critical details could be overlooked or misunderstood if messaging lacked clarity or focus.
Strategic judgment centered on prioritization, accessibility, and behavioral clarity. Messaging was intentionally simplified and sequenced to guide employees through the enrollment process step by step, reinforcing trust and reducing cognitive load. Plain-language principles, consistent terminology, and clear calls to action were applied across all channels to ensure information felt approachable and actionable.
Rather than relying on volume, the strategy emphasized repetition with purpose—reinforcing key messages at critical moments to support confident decision-making and sustained engagement throughout the enrollment window.
Process
Campaign Planning & Audience Segmentation
Defined a phased communications strategy that accounted for distinct employee groups, including salaried staff, craft employees without company email access, jobsite administrators, and executive leadership.
Determined appropriate channels, cadence, and tone for each audience to ensure messages were received and acted upon.
Campaign Development
Developed clear, plain-language messaging aligned with AP style and internal writing standards.
Wrote and refined all core campaign materials, including pre-enrollment awareness messaging, enrollment launch announcements, midpoint reminders, and final deadline communications.
Emphasis was placed on action-oriented clarity, consistent terminology, and a reading level appropriate for a broad workforce.
Execution, Coordination, and Iteration
Coordinated distribution across multiple channels, including email via Microsoft’s Viva Amplify, intranet, text messaging, and jobsite materials. Worked closely with Human Resources (HR) and internal stakeholders to confirm timelines, address employee questions, and refine messaging based on feedback and participation trends throughout the enrollment window.
Outcome
The campaign delivered a clear, structured enrollment experience supported by consistent messaging across channels and audiences. Employees received timely, accessible guidance throughout the enrollment period, resulting in improved participation, reduced confusion-driven inquiries, and more confident decision-making.
The redesigned communications framework increased overall engagement and completion rates, with Open Enrollment participation rising from 80% to 93% and click-through engagement improving from 63% to 82%. Leadership communications remained aligned and consistent throughout the process, reinforcing trust and clarity at the enterprise level.
Beyond the immediate enrollment cycle, the campaign established a repeatable communications model for future benefits initiatives. The structure, cadence, and messaging standards developed during this effort now serve as a foundation for ongoing benefits communications and other high-impact internal campaigns.
Reflection
This work reinforced the importance of disciplined communication planning for operationally critical initiatives. Success depended less on creative expression and more on clarity, sequencing, and respect for how different audiences receive information. Leading this campaign strengthened my ability to translate complex policy-driven content into clear, usable communications while coordinating across HR, leadership, and field teams.