The founders who consistently get better renewal outcomes started thinking about next year in November — and the planning that happens now is what determines how much leverage they have when renewal arrives.
The new year scramble is not inevitable. It happens when you treat benefits strategy as a reactive process, something you engage with when you have to, rather than something you build around. The founders who consistently get better renewal outcomes, who walk into carrier conversations with leverage instead of desperation, who don’t get surprised by a rate increase they could have anticipated, started thinking about next year while this year was still playing out.
November is when that work should start. Here’s what it actually looks like.
Before you think about 2027, it’s worth spending some time with 2026’s quantitative and qualitative data. In other words, what the program actually did and how your employees received it.
Did your employees understand their benefits well enough to use them correctly? The questions that came into HR during open enrollment are a direct measure of where the communication fell short. The claims patterns in your utilization data show you whether employees are engaging with the plan the way it was designed or avoiding it because the costs feel too high.
Did the plan fit your team? If your company grew this year, added employees in new locations, or shifted demographically in ways that affect what your people need from their benefits program, the plan you renewed last fall may not be the right fit for the team you have going into 2027.
Did your broker bring you anything useful this year outside of renewal season? If the honest answer is no, that is relevant information for the conversation you should be having about what you want the relationship to look like next year.
The most valuable thing you can do in November is pull your utilization data and sit down with your broker to understand what it shows. Before you ever make a decision, this gives you the context to begin more fruitful renewal conversations.
Your utilization data tells you where your plan dollars are going, which benefits your employees are actually using, and whether there are patterns developing that are likely to affect your renewal number. Reviewing it in November means you have time to understand it, ask questions about it, and think about what it implies for your plan design going into next year.
It also means you can start modeling alternatives before the pressure is on. The CFOs and founders who walk into renewal with two or three plan scenarios already modeled are in a fundamentally different position than the ones seeing the carrier’s proposal for the first time in February. The former have something to evaluate against. The latter are just reacting.
A few specific things worth thinking through before January arrives.
Most brokers wait until eight to ten weeks before renewal. We’ve historically seen the best outcomes from beginning at least 120 days out. If your renewal is in the spring, that window opens soon.
Multi-state employers in particular often have state-specific requirements—paid leave updates, reporting obligations, plan document amendments—that have deadlines tied to the calendar year rather than the renewal date.
This is the question most founders never ask until something forces it. Asking it in November, when there is no immediate pressure, tends to produce clearer answers than asking it in February when the renewal number is already on the table.
The employers who build the best benefits programs aren’t the ones who work hardest during renewal season. They’re the ones who started the work in November when there’s still time to act on the data and communicate with their team.
It’s not a complicated way to run a benefits program. It just requires someone willing to pay attention at the moment when nothing is on fire. If you want to talk through what that looks like for your business before the year ends, the evco team is here.
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Brian Allen | President, evco | Managing benefits for 36,000+ lives since 2005
Open enrollment going imperfectly is the normal experience — what separates the HR teams that handle it well is not that they avoid problems; it is that they have a plan for when problems arrive.
Open enrollment communication fails when it's designed around what HR needs to say rather than what employees need to understand. Closing that gap is what separates a clean enrollment from a chaotic one.
October exposes everything a benefits program got away with during the quieter months — and the mistakes that surface are almost always ones that started in the preparation, communication, and accountability decisions made long before renewal arrived.