“I’m New to All This”: How ALEX Helped a Government Employee Through Her First Benefits Enrollment

Yessica Conde was both new to the support staff at the City of Bloomington, Illinois’s water department—and to the experience of choosing employer-offered benefits.

Understandably, she was a little nervous. The stakes were high. Not only had she never gone through an open enrollment before, her fiancé at the time was a type 1 diabetic without health insurance, and they were planning to get married soon. She wanted to make sure that the decisions she made would benefit them both in the short- and long-term.

Here’s Yessica on how ALEX helped her through the process:

ALEX made things simple

“When I first started, [the city’s HR team] presented me with a thick booklet filled with everything from retirement plans, life insurance, two types of pension plans, and health savings accounts which I wasn’t familiar with at the time. Just a big stack of different options and the paperwork that explained it all. It was intimidating. But we were also given pamphlets telling us about ALEX and everybody in the office was talking about how they wanted to try ALEX out.

To have ALEX give me the information in smaller pieces, rather than all that paperwork, it helped explain things in ways I understood. It presented phrases and scenarios I could relate to myself.”

ALEX offered me—and my co-workers—advice specific to our different life situations

“Everyone is super friendly in the office, so I would ask what plans they were looking at and bounce questions and ideas off of them. But it can be different to talk about personal life scenarios with co-workers, especially since we’re all in different stages.

I asked them if they used ALEX and if it helped. They all said yes, they were all very impressed with ALEX. We were curious if ALEX just refers or defaults to one particular plan option, so we went through and answered with different life scenarios and it gave a new option for each scenario. ALEX would give you what works best for you.”

ALEX helped me decide when to get married (!)

“We were engaged when I was going through the benefits packages. We knew that we were going to get married soon and he didn’t have health insurance at the time. Because he is a type 1 diabetic, it made me want to get married sooner so he could have health coverage. ALEX was an influence on me to make sure the decisions I made affected him in a positive way. And, well, he’s my husband now.”