Open Enrollment

Open Enrollment for plan year 2026 begins Thursday, October 16, 2025, and ends on Friday, October 31, 2025. 

Employee Enrollment

All enrollments will take place directly in Workday.
If you take no action, your current benefits (excluding FSA Medical or Dependent Care) will roll over to the new 2026 plan year.

Additionally, ALEX is still available to help you with your enrollment options!

ALEX, our avatar counselor that can help you find a plan, or assist you with any questions on how your insurance works.  ALEX can now be accessed directly through Workday!

Here are three important things to know about the ALEX tool:

  1. It is personalized, so you can see which plan makes the most sense for YOU.
  2. It is fun to use. There’s no boring insurance jargon or complicated legal jibber-jabber.
  3. It is confidential, so you can get the guidance you need without revealing all of your fascinating secrets.

To learn more about this new feature, click the link below.

Access the ALEX Interactive Tool. 

Medical Benefits

For 2026, we will continue to offer four plans: Kaiser, EPO, PPO, and HDHP. Other than Kaiser, plans are through Benefit and Risk Management Services (BRMS) with Anthem Network. Please review the Summary of Benefits for each plan below.

You may review the provider directory for the EPO, PPO, and HDHP plans at https://www.anthem.com/find-care/ and use Network: Prudent Buyer PPO/EPO.

How to Find a Provider [pdf] — Anthem (for EPO, PPO, HDHP plans).

Ancillary Benefits

For 2026, MetLife is our provider for Dental, Vision, Life, Long Term Disability and AD&D. Please review the summaries for each plan below.

Additional Voluntary Benefits

We will also continue to offer employees the option to purchase additional supplemental or voluntary life insurance for themselves, spouse, and children at group rates through MetLife. In addition to voluntary benefits, employees are able to purchase the following voluntary benefits: Critical Illness, Hospital Indemnity, Accident, and Pet Insurance. These are portable benefits.

Employee Assistance Programs

For 2026, we have First Stop Health with Free Virtual Mental Health Counseling for employees and their dependents.

All employees are also eligible for employee assistance through MetLife LifeWorks EAP. This plan is provided to all employees and their dependents at no cost and includes up to 5 face-to-face counseling sessions, as well as a wealth of additional resources.

Flexible Spending Accounts (FSA) and Health Savings Account (HSA)

Please review the summaries for each of the Flexible Spending Account offerings for 2026 below.

Employees enrolling in the HDHP plan are eligible to enroll in a Health Savings Account. HSA enrollees can enroll in Combination FSA. Please see links below for further information.

*FSA and HSA limits are subject to change and are not considered official until the IRS releases more information on thes 2026 benefit limits later this year.

Related Information

Retiree Open Enrollment

Questions?

If you have questions, please contact Ashleigh Baker at 408 924-1449 or at ashleigh.baker@sjsu.edu