Why Your Benefits Team Dreads Open Enrollment (and How AI Can Help)

The reality of open enrollment today

Despite the best efforts of HR leaders, consultants, and vendors, the system is broken:

• 86% of employees are confused about their benefits (Businessolver, 2026 Benefits Insights Report)
• Thousands of questions come in during OE and can take days to resolve
• Healthcare costs are projected to rise nearly 9% in 2026, the sharpest increase in more than a decade (Business Group on Health, 2026 Employer Health Care Strategy Survey)

The result is confused employees, overworked benefits teams, and rising costs that outpace budgets.

The hidden costs of confusion

Confusion around benefits is more than a seasonal frustration. It creates ongoing costs:

• 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 keep compounding, making it harder for leaders to manage costs and deliver the employee experience they want.

How AI is transforming 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:

• "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. Surface unseen benefits

Most employees don't know everything that's available to them, especially when they're in the middle of a benefits decision. AI can recommend the right program at the right moment, in the natural flow of an employee's question.

For example, if an employee asks about the cost of a mental health visit, AI can point them to the mental health point solution that's already part of their benefits package. If someone is researching fertility options, AI can surface the fertility benefit they may not have realized was covered. This improves utilization of programs employers are already paying for and steers employees toward higher-value, lower-cost care at the moment of need.

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:

• "Where are our biggest cost drivers?"
• "Which vendors are underperforming their SLAs?"
• "Are employees actually using the programs we are investing in?"

As Dene Sparrman, Global Head of Benefits at Zscaler, put it: "Instead of wondering if GLP-1s would impact costs, we got instant data-driven answers." These insights help leaders spot patterns, identify opportunities, and make timely, data-driven decisions.

The impact of AI in benefits

When AI is applied to open enrollment, the results show up across the function:

• 40% decrease in routine workload for benefits teams, freeing time for strategy and employee experience
• Stronger employee engagement, as benefits are finally understood and used, with 1 in 3 employees engaging with AI on average and more during key events like M&A
• Better support when employees need it, with 35% of questions answered outside of normal working hours
• Near real-time visibility for leaders, with clarity on utilization, ROI, and employee sentiment

Avante: AI trusted by benefits leaders

Avante is the first AI-native benefits intelligence platform designed from the ground up to make this vision real. The platform ingests your plan documents and data and integrates directly with your systems. From there:

• Carly, the AI benefits agent for employees, delivers personalized benefits guidance, 24/7
• Ava, the AI benefits agent for HR, provides analyst-grade reports and instant insight into costs, utilization, and vendor performance, in minutes not weeks

SurveyMonkey shows what's possible. They deployed Avante for open enrollment, saving their benefits team 369 hours in the two week period of open enrollment alone. Read the SurveyMonkey case study →

Other customers describe similar impact. Sarah Schutzberger, Benefits and Wellness Sr. Manager at Samsung Semiconductor, called her team's experience "the smoothest open enrollment we ever had. The amount of time it saved our team was extraordinary." Elizabeth Chrane, Chief People Officer at OneDigital, summed up the bigger picture: "Our teams now have the superpowers to focus on the meaningful, high-impact work that brought us to HR."

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, covering 401(k), leave of absence, healthcare, and more. Companies are using Avante to turn benefits complexity into clarity, all year long.

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