Set up & Kick off Open Enrollment

Once your Maxwell implementation or renewal is complete, it's time for you to set up your Open Enrollment event in Maxwell. 

In this article, we'll review:

• How to set up Open Enrollment
• How to kick off Open Enrollment with your employees

NOTE: Only Master Administrators have access to the OE tool. Standard Administrators cannot see the “Set up Open Enrollment” tab, and will not see the widget on the Admin dashboard. Learn more about Admin permissions here >

Set up Open Enrollment

To set up Open Enrollment you'll follow these steps:

1. Set up your Open Enrollment details
   • Set your Open Enrollment shopping dates
   • Select the eligibility groups who will be included in the OE
   • Select the benefits your employees should be able to shop for as part of this OE
2. Review the summary to approve your OE Setup
   • Confirm your OE settings are correct
   • Be careful to review any employees with warnings due to overlapping system events and determine if you need to take action prior to completing the OE setup
   • Review your payroll items and employee salaries for salary-based benefits
   • Preview your open enrollment shopping as a test employee
     • Learn more about Take it for a Test Drive >>
3. Complete your OE Setup (on the day your OE event should start)

Tip: If you see the salary required warning on your dashboard after completing the Open Enrollment setup, make sure to enter or upload salary information for these employees before sending out open enrollment communications. Don't forget! Employees cannot shop for any benefits if salary is required for one or more of their benefits to show accurately.

See a walkthrough of the detailed steps below:

Kick off Open Enrollment

There are also a few steps you’ll want to take to kick off Open Enrollment on the OE Start Date!

Complete your own Open Enrollment

• If this is your first time running annual open enrollment through Maxwell, you may also want to try the shopping experience for yourself, as an employee, as soon as your OE period begins. You can do this by logging into your employee account and running through Maxwell before you send an email to your employees. You can also see what any of your employees see at any time by clicking on Log in as Employee from an employee's profile page.

Communicate Open Enrollment to Employees

• We recommend sending an email to employees on the annual OE Start Date when the products will be available for shopping. You can do this in Maxwell by taking the following steps:
• Click Email Employees from the Dashboard
  
  
• The tool will populate a distribution list of your employees who are included in the Open Enrollment event. The "Welcome & Annual Open Enrollment" template will automatically default but you may want to switch to the "Kick Off Annual Open Enrollment" if this is a renewal or your employees have already been using maxwell.
  • Note: If you have any employees in Maxwell without email addresses, you’ll need to communicate the steps to access Maxwell with them prior to your Open Enrollment and can provide them with the Getting Started Guide. These employees will not be able to receive the email communications you send from the system, including OE announcements and reminder emails, until they enter their email address.
• You can edit the template before you send to employees.
  • Note: Whether you use our email templates or not, make sure you include the link to Maxwell Health, so employees know where to go to log in (https://member.maxwellhealth.com/login)!
  • Read more on how to compose and send welcome emails to your employees through Maxwell.

TIP: If using our Send Communications tool for the first time, ask your IT department or Network Administrator to allowlist Maxwell's dedicated IP for email. An allowlist is a list of email addresses or domain names from which an email blocking program will allow messages to be received.