A Simple Year-End Reflection for HR & Benefits Leaders Planning for 2026

As the year starts back up, many HR teams feel pressure to jump straight into planning. New initiatives. New tools. New priorities.

But for HR and benefits leaders, the most valuable planning often starts by looking back with the goal of learning, not critique. A thoughtful year-end reflection helps teams understand what actually worked, where friction showed up, and what deserves focus in the year ahead

The key is keeping that reflection simple and intentional.

Here’s a practical way to step back and prepare for 2026 without overengineering the process.

1. Revisit Intent, Not Just Outcomes
Before reviewing metrics or feedback, it helps to return to what you set out to do.

Most HR and benefits teams began the year with clear objectives: benefits strategy goals, Open Enrollment priorities, employee experience improvements, or commitments made to leadership. Over the course of the year, some of those goals were achieved. Others shifted as business needs changed.

The value in this step isn’t measuring success or failure. It’s understanding why certain priorities moved, stalled, or accelerated. That context matters when deciding what should carry forward and what no longer fits.

Reflection grounded in intent leads to better decisions than hindsight alone.

2. Look at the Employee Experience After Open Enrollment
For benefits teams, the real story often starts after Open Enrollment ends.

This is when employees and families begin using what they selected. Questions surface. Confusion becomes visible. HR inboxes fill with follow-ups that didn’t appear during enrollment itself.

A useful year-end review asks:

• Where did employees struggle to find or understand information?
• Which benefits topics generated the most questions throughout the year?
• What resources actually helped employees outside of Open Enrollment?

Focusing on lived experience, rather than just plan design, reveals where clarity broke down and where communication worked as intended.

3. Examine Where HR Time Was Spent
One of the clearest signals of improvement opportunities is repetition.

If HR teams spent significant time answering the same benefits questions all year, that isn’t a people problem. It’s a systems, process, or communication issue showing itself.

Looking back, it’s worth considering:

• What questions came up again and again?
• Which answers required manual explanation instead of self-service?
• Where did HR effort go toward clarification instead of higher-value work?

This step reframes workload as insight. Repeated questions signal friction and opportunities for high-impact improvement.

4. Prioritize a Few Improvements That Reduce Friction
Reflection only matters if it leads to focus.

Rather than building a long list of initiatives for the new year, effective HR teams prioritize a few improvements that meaningfully reduce confusion and effort. Often, that means:

• Making benefits information easier to access year-round
• Clarifying what does not change as much as what does
• Reducing reliance on one-off explanations and tribal knowledge

Not everything needs to change. The goal is to improve clarity, reduce noise, and support both employees and HR teams at scale.

Closing Thought
A strong HR and benefits strategy for 2026 doesn’t start with more activity. It starts with understanding.

By revisiting intent, examining employee experience, learning from HR workload, and prioritizing a few high-impact improvements, enterprise HR leaders can enter the new year with confidence and focus, rather than just a longer to-do list.

Sometimes, the most strategic move is simply slowing down long enough to see what the year already taught you.