Healthcare
How a 3,200-Employee Healthcare System Cut Enrollment Time by 85%
A regional healthcare system operating across 6 hospital campuses, 14 outpatient clinics, and a network of specialty practices came to OPM with a benefits program that was buckling under its own complexity.
The Challenge
With 3,200 employees spanning clinical staff, administrative personnel, facilities teams, and leadership, this healthcare system managed over 14 distinct benefit plan configurations. Three separate union contracts each mandated different plan structures, contribution levels, and eligibility windows. Non-union employees had their own tiers based on job classification and FTE status.
Enrollment was managed through a combination of paper forms, a decade-old web portal, and an overwhelmed three-person HR benefits team. Each open enrollment period consumed nearly 10 weeks of around-the-clock effort, and the team routinely discovered data discrepancies weeks after coverage effective dates — leading to denied claims, employee complaints, and emergency corrections with carriers.
The error rate had climbed to 12%, and employee satisfaction with the benefits process had dropped to 54% in the most recent engagement survey. The CHRO knew that continuing on this path was not sustainable.
The Solution
OPM deployed a fully configured enrollment platform tailored to every nuance of the healthcare system's benefit structure. Each union contract was modeled with its own eligibility rules, contribution tables, and plan options. The rule engine automatically surfaced only the plans each employee was eligible for, eliminating confusion and preventing ineligible elections.
Licensed benefit counselors were stationed at each of the six hospital campuses during open enrollment, with virtual sessions available for second and third-shift clinical staff. The AI-powered decision support tool analyzed each employee's household composition, prescription history (via voluntary opt-in), and anticipated healthcare utilization to recommend plan options — in plain language, not insurance jargon.
Automated EDI feeds to seven insurance carriers ensured that every election was transmitted, confirmed, and reconciled in real-time. Discrepancies were flagged automatically and resolved by OPM's fulfillment team before they could impact employee coverage.
The Results
Open enrollment was completed in just 12 days — down from the previous 10-week marathon. The enrollment error rate dropped from 12% to under 1%, and not a single coverage gap was reported in the first full year on the OPM platform. The HR benefits team reclaimed an estimated 1,200 hours annually, allowing them to redirect focus toward strategic initiatives like wellness programming and retention.
Employee satisfaction with the benefits enrollment process jumped from 54% to 91% in the following year's engagement survey. The CHRO noted: "For the first time in my career, I didn't dread open enrollment. OPM made it feel like it was on autopilot — but with real people there whenever we needed them."
Technology
Scaling Benefits for a Fast-Growing Tech Company from 200 to 1,500 Employees
A venture-backed SaaS company was doubling headcount every 18 months, expanding from its Austin headquarters into offices in San Francisco, New York, Denver, and a fully remote workforce across 22 states.
The Challenge
The company had outgrown its startup-era benefits setup: a single PEO relationship that offered limited plan choices and a one-size-fits-all enrollment experience. As the company crossed 200 employees, leadership decided to transition to a self-funded benefits program with multiple carrier options — but the two-person People team had no experience managing complex benefits infrastructure.
State-by-state compliance was becoming a minefield. Each new office and each remote employee in a new state added another layer of regulatory requirements. The company's tech-savvy workforce expected a seamless, mobile-first enrollment experience — and the legacy PEO portal was anything but.
With a Series C round closing and plans to grow to 1,500 employees within three years, the VP of People needed a benefits partner that could scale, not a solution they'd outgrow in 12 months.
The Solution
OPM implemented in just three weeks — including full plan configuration, HRIS integration with Rippling, carrier EDI setup with four carriers, and SSO deployment via Okta. The platform was branded to match the company's design system, making the enrollment experience feel native to employees.
The enrollment engine was optimized for mobile-first interaction, since over 70% of the workforce completed enrollment on their phones. State-specific plan rules and compliance requirements were built into the platform's rule engine, automatically adjusting available plans, required notices, and contribution structures based on each employee's work state.
As the company grew, OPM scaled with them. New state expansions were configured in days. New benefit lines — including a pet insurance program and a student loan repayment benefit — were added mid-year without disruption. The dedicated account team served as an extension of the People team, handling carrier negotiations, compliance monitoring, and employee support.
96%
Employee Satisfaction
The Results
The company grew from 200 to 1,500 employees over 30 months without adding a single benefits-focused hire. The OPM platform and account team absorbed all of the complexity, from new-state compliance to mid-year life events to annual renewals.
Employee satisfaction with benefits hit 96%, making it one of the top-rated categories in the company's internal engagement survey. Average enrollment time was 6 minutes on mobile. The VP of People reported: "OPM gave us Fortune 500-level benefits infrastructure at a stage when most companies our size are still duct-taping things together. It's genuinely been a competitive advantage in recruiting."
Government
Modernizing Benefits for 8,000 Municipal Government Employees
A major metropolitan city government employing 8,000 workers across public safety, public works, parks and recreation, administration, and dozens of other departments embarked on its first benefits technology modernization in over 15 years.
The Challenge
The city's benefits enrollment had been paper-based for as long as anyone could remember. Each year, 8,000 paper enrollment forms were collected, manually keyed into a legacy mainframe system, and then re-entered into individual carrier portals. The process involved six full-time HR staff and a team of temporary workers for three months each year.
Five different union contracts governed five different benefit structures, each with unique eligibility rules, contribution formulas, and coverage tiers. The complexity meant that HR relied on a 47-page internal reference manual to process elections — and errors were frequent. On average, 8% of enrollments required post-submission corrections, and coverage-gap complaints from employees were a regular occurrence.
The city council had allocated funding for digital transformation, and the HR Director knew that benefits modernization would deliver the most immediate impact on both operational efficiency and employee experience.
The Solution
OPM's implementation team spent six weeks in deep discovery with the city's HR department, union representatives, and IT security team before configuring a single screen. Every union contract was mapped into the platform's rule engine. Contribution tables, waiting periods, eligibility windows, and grandfathered plan provisions were modeled with precision — and union stewards were given access to review and validate configurations before launch.
Recognizing that a significant portion of the workforce included field workers, first responders, and non-desk employees, OPM deployed a mobile-optimized enrollment experience alongside staffed enrollment kiosks in fire stations, police precincts, parks facilities, and city hall. Benefit counselors provided in-person support in English, Spanish, and Vietnamese — the city's three most-spoken languages.
The platform integrated with the city's SAP-based HRIS and payroll system, automating the data flow that had previously required triple-entry. EDI feeds to all eight insurance carriers were established and tested before the enrollment window opened.
The Results
In the first year on the OPM platform, 92% of employees completed enrollment digitally — a remarkable adoption rate for a workforce that had never used an online benefits tool. The remaining 8% were assisted through in-person kiosk sessions with benefit counselors.
The city eliminated the need for temporary enrollment staff and reassigned four of six benefits HR positions to other strategic functions, saving an estimated $1.2 million annually in direct labor costs. Zero coverage gaps were reported for the first time in the city's recorded history. Enrollment errors dropped from 8% to 0.3%.
The HR Director presented the results to city council, calling it "the single most successful technology deployment in the history of our HR department." Union leadership, initially skeptical of the transition, became vocal advocates after seeing the employee experience firsthand. The city has since expanded its OPM engagement to include retiree benefits administration and COBRA management.
