Why Your Benefits Team Dreads Open Enrollment (and How AI Can Help)
Open enrollment should be a time when employees make confident choices about their health and financial benefits. Too often, though, it becomes the most stressful time of year for Benefits teams.
The Reality of Open Enrollment Today
Despite the best efforts of HR leaders, consultants, and vendors, the system is broken:
73% of employees do not understand their benefits
Even a simple question about a weight-loss benefit can take days to resolve, bouncing between ticketing systems, HR departments, and vendor guides
Employer healthcare costs are rising nearly 8% year-over-year, the sharpest increase in more than a decade (Business Group on Health, 2025)
The result is confused employees, overworked Benefits teams and rising costs that outpace budgets.
As one Benefits leader described it:
“We spend weeks buried in benefits questions, when what we really need is time to focus on strategy.”
The Hidden Costs of Confusion
Confusion around benefits is more than a seasonal frustration. It creates ongoing costs that compound year after year:
Underutilized programs: employees miss out on valuable offerings because they don’t know they exist
Avoidable claims: without guidance, employees may default to higher-cost or out-of-network care
Lost productivity: Benefits teams spend hours resolving Tier 0/1 questions instead of focusing on higher-value work
Uncontrolled spend: leaders lack the unified data and ROI visibility to optimize investments or hold vendors accountable
Without a new approach, these challenges will keep compounding, making it harder for leaders to manage costs and deliver the employee experience they want.
How AI Can Transform Open Enrollment
AI offers a new way forward by addressing the root causes of confusion and inefficiency. Three use cases stand out for Benefits leaders:
1. Automating routine questions
AI can resolve the most common inquiries instantly, such as: “Which plan covers my spouse’s medication?” • “How does tuition reimbursement work here?” • “When does my 401(k) match start?” This frees Benefits teams from repetitive Tier 0/1 workload. For more complex cases, AI can draft responses for HR review or route the issue directly to the right vendor or internal expert.
2. Proactive guidance and nudges
Instead of waiting for employees to seek help, AI can prompt action at the right time. Reminders based on plan deadlines, benefit guides, or life events can encourage preventive care, highlight underused programs, or nudge employees to complete open enrollment forms. This ensures benefits aren’t just available but actually used.
3. Instant answers for leaders
For Benefits leaders, waiting weeks for utilization or cost reports is no longer necessary. AI can answer questions in seconds, such as:
“Which groups of employees are using our programs the most or least?”
“Which vendors are actually delivering measurable ROI?”
“Which benefits are employees asking about that we don’t currently offer?”
These insights help leaders spot patterns, identify opportunities, and make timely, data-driven decisions.
The Measurable Impact of AI in Benefits
When AI is applied to open enrollment, the results are powerful:
Reduced Benefits team workload, freeing time for strategy and employee experience
Stronger employee engagement, as benefits are finally understood and used
Better support when employees need it, with many questions answered outside of normal working hours
More visibility for leaders, who gain clarity on utilization, ROI, and employee sentiment
As one Benefits leader who is using AI for benefits support put it:
“It feels like our team now has superpowers. We can finally focus on the meaningful, high-impact work we came to HR to do.”
Employees feel the difference too:
“AI helped me narrow down exactly what I needed in health insurance. I felt much more informed, which led me to the best decision for me.”
Avante: Bringing AI to Benefits
At Avante, we’ve built the first AI-native benefits platform to make this vision real. At the foundation, the Vault unifies data across HRIS, claims, benefits systems, and vendors into a single source of truth. From there:
Carly, the employee-facing AI concierge, provides personalized answers 24/7 directly within Slack, Teams, email, or your HRIS
Ava, the employer-facing AI, gives leaders instant answers to any question about costs, utilization, vendor performance, or ROI
With Avante, organizations can:
Deliver world-class employee experiences with 24/7 guidance in the flow of work
Control rising costs with real-time visibility into utilization and vendor performance
Free Benefits leaders to focus on the high-impact, strategic work they came to HR to do
Of course, benefits questions do not stop at open enrollment, and neither does Avante. Built for the entire employee lifecycle, Avante delivers trusted, personalized benefits guidance from onboarding to offboarding and every stage in between. Imagine transforming open enrollment from dreaded to delightful, and extending that same level of support all year long.
Ready to see how? Request a demo today!
