Open enrollment, without the fire drill

Open enrollment compresses a year's worth of planning and preparation into a few deadline-driven weeks.

As companies head into open enrollment season, benefits admins and brokers are racing to finalize plans and pricing, then preparing employee-facing educational materials, like webinar slides and company-branded benefits guides. Once open enrollment starts, they're playing whack-a-mole with employee questions about their benefits, monitoring elections and following up with everyone who hasn't enrolled. All the while, the work is spread out across carriers' plan documents, rate sheets, presentations, reports, Slack and email.

Today, we're reintroducing our open enrollment in Rippling with: Quick Renewals, Benefits Decision Support, and Open Enrollment Management.

Together, they give benefits admins and brokers a faster path from plan renewal to completed enrollments, with fewer follow-ups for benefits teams and less guesswork for employees.

Start open enrollment faster with Quick Renewals

70% of benefits renewals in Rippling keep the same plans from one year to the next. In these renewals, the only plan change is the price.

Quick Renewals lets administrators and brokers focus on exactly that.

When a company keeps its existing plans, the benefits admin or the broker can carry those plans into the new year, update pricing, and set the new open enrollment window. Rippling brings forward the remaining plan information, shortening the path to a completed renewal.

For brokers supporting several clients through open enrollment, this means less time repeating last year's setup and more time focused on benefits strategy and employee education.

Give employees personalized guidance as they enroll in benefits

Once open enrollment starts, that's when the Slack pings, emails, and office hours get booked up with questions.

What's the difference between these plans? Which plan is best for me and my family? What's the difference between an HSA and a FSA?

Benefits Decision Support helps employees answer those questions as they are going through benefits enrollment within Rippling.

Employees can compare plans side by side and see the cost of each available option. They can also model common scenarios, like pregnancy or a minor accident, to see how those costs would change under each plan.

With Rippling AI, employees can also answer a few questions and get a personalized recommendation for their plan options. Rippling matches their answers against their available plans to show which one fits best.

For benefits admins and brokers, this creates a better first line of support. Employees can resolve more of their routine plan and cost questions as they enroll, leaving benefits teams with more time to focus on exceptions and the questions that need their expertise.

Catch enrollment gaps before the deadline does

Setting up the plan is just the start. Benefits teams still need to draft the materials to explain each plan, respond to questions in Slack, track completion, and ensure that employees complete their benefits elections.

Open Enrollment Management handles most of that work.

Using the plans configured in Rippling, it can draft company-branded educational materials, such as benefits guides and FAQs. When given access to supported channels such as Slack and email, Rippling AI can answer routine benefits questions from employees, bringing the benefits admin into questions that require additional review. As open enrollment begins, Rippling monitors live enrollment status and follows up over Slack and email with employees who need to complete their elections, and sends regular progress updates to admins.

Each of these capabilities remain under the admin's control: they approve the educational content, set up the Slack channels where Rippling AI can reply to benefits questions, and set the reminder schedule for employees. This allows Benefits teams to handle escalations and maintain a clear view of completion, while Rippling handles the execution.

One connected workflow from renewal through enrollment

Rippling's advantage is simple: the plan, pricing, eligibility, employee, and enrollment data that open enrollment depends on is already in one system. That lets admins and brokers move from finalized plans to completed benefits elections without rebuilding the same context across different tools, while employees get guidance based on the benefits actually available to them.

The result is less repetitive work for benefits teams, fewer follow-ups, and more confident decisions for employees.

Availability

Quick Renewals is live for eligible Benefits Administration customers, and Benefits Decision Support is available as a beta. Open Enrollment Management will launch in October, and customers can join the waitlist today.