Getting honest feedback about employee benefits survey questions during open enrollment can reveal what's working and what's leaving your team confused.
The right questions help HR teams understand employee needs and improve benefit offerings.
We’ll explore the most effective questions for open enrollment surveys, focusing on uncovering confusion and preferences.
Why open enrollment feedback changes everything
Open enrollment is a stressful time—employees often feel overwhelmed by jargon and too many options. It's common to see people making choices based more on what feels “safe” than what truly fits their needs.
Decision paralysis: 53% of employees say cost is the number one driver in benefits decisions during open enrollment, often because it's simpler to compare than plan details. That means many skip over what might actually serve them best. [1]
Knowledge gaps: 41% report they would have elected different benefits if they better understood the options, signaling that communication breakdowns are real and costly. [1]
Cost concerns: With health insurance premiums projected to rise by 6% to 7% by 2026, financial stress can cloud employees’ judgment when picking a plan. [2]
When we collect targeted feedback, we uncover these pain points. It lets HR teams spot the confusion, clarify offerings, and improve open enrollment experiences year over year.
Essential questions to understand enrollment decisions
Let’s start with a set of foundational questions every open enrollment survey should include. These elicit the “what,” “why,” and “where” of your employees’ decisions:
Which benefits package did you select and why? This question reveals decision-making factors, such as price sensitivity, coverage needs, or previous experiences.
What aspects of the benefits options were most confusing? This highlights areas where communication or plan structure missed the mark—and where employees feel lost.
Did you feel you had enough information to make an informed choice? This measures the effectiveness of your communication materials and HR support.
What additional benefits would you like to see offered? This opens the floor to unmet needs, sparking ideas for future enrollment cycles.
These essential questions are the baseline for actionable feedback. But the best insights come from smart follow-ups—especially when answers suggest confusion or hesitation.
How AI follow-ups uncover hidden enrollment challenges
Static surveys limit the feedback you’ll get. People might check a box about being “confused,” but what does that really mean? That’s where AI-powered follow-up questions make all the difference. When an employee hints at confusion or uncertainty, the AI asks clarifying questions in real time for richer insights.
For example, if someone responds, “the health plans were confusing,” the AI might immediately probe, “What specific aspects were unclear—deductibles, coverage, or costs?”
If another says, “Not sure if I made the right choice,” a follow-up might be, “What information would have helped you feel more confident?”
With this approach, surveys become dynamic conversations, not stale forms. Employees feel heard—and you’ll get context you never would in a static form. Curious how it works? Learn more about automatic AI follow-up questions and see your surveys come alive.
Advanced questions that reveal systemic issues
Ready to dig deeper? These advanced questions help uncover issues that go beyond individual confusion and touch on broader organizational patterns:
Communication effectiveness: “How would you rate the clarity of benefits communications?” The AI can probe, asking about which materials—emails, webinars, or plan documents—worked best or failed the most.
Decision support: “What tools or resources did you use to compare plans?” AI follow-ups dig into gaps: Did people need a side-by-side comparison or a “plan picker” tool that doesn’t exist?
Family considerations: “How did family needs influence your benefits choices?” The AI can ask unique follow-ups: Was dental important for kids, or was spousal coverage a headache?
Let’s look at how conversational surveys outpace traditional forms:
Traditional Survey Approach | Conversational Survey Approach |
|---|---|
Static questions | Dynamic AI follow-ups |
Limited insights | Deeper understanding |
One-size-fits-all | Personalized interactions |
The beauty of AI-driven conversations is adaptability: The survey can automatically tailor questions based on employee role, tenure, or even answers given just moments before. That’s what makes conversational survey pages and in-product conversational surveys such powerful tools for every HR team.
Turning enrollment feedback into actionable improvements
Now comes the tough part: analyzing dozens or hundreds of survey responses without drowning in open-ended feedback. AI-powered analysis cuts through the noise, surfacing the key themes and statistics you need. The AI survey response analysis feature lets you chat with the data, like having an insight analyst on call.
Here are example prompts you can use to make sense of your own results:
Finding confusion patterns:
What are the top 3 areas where employees expressed confusion about benefits options?
Identifying decision factors:
What factors most influenced employees' benefits selections this year?
Uncovering improvement opportunities:
Based on employee feedback, what specific changes would improve next year's enrollment experience?
If you’re new to this kind of analysis, consider these AI tools as your shortcut to actionable enrollment improvements.
Best practices for launching your enrollment survey
I’ve found a few things make HR teams vastly more successful when gathering employee feedback on benefits:
Timing recommendations: Send your survey within 2 weeks after open enrollment closes, while memories are fresh and frustrations clear in employees’ minds.
Anonymity: Guarantee responses are anonymous so employees feel safe being candid about what confused, annoyed, or delighted them.
Survey creation: Use an AI survey generator to draft and launch your survey in minutes. Just give the AI a prompt, and it will craft an open enrollment survey—personalized for your organization.
Keep surveys brief: Aim for under 10 minutes for your core set of questions. Let AI handle the in-depth follow-ups dynamically, so busy employees don't bounce.
Share your impact: Let employees know how their feedback is used to design better benefit experiences—closing the loop builds trust and increases response rates next time.
Mobile-first approach: Many employees finish surveys on the move, so make sure your survey is built for any device. Modern conversational surveys—especially those built with Specific—look and feel great whether completed from a phone, tablet, or laptop.
Transform your next open enrollment with better feedback
Understanding employee benefits decisions means asking the right questions with smart follow-ups. Conversational surveys with AI capture feedback traditional forms miss. Create your own survey now and let AI guide you toward questions that truly matter.