Open enrollment season starts soon and unfortunately for many organizations, that'll mean informing employees that they've got higher healthcare co-pays and deductibles starting in January. But for some employers, this year's open enrollment season brings some innovative twists to their benefits offerings, thanks to the web.Arizona State University is among employers gearing up to offer workers some new benefit-related conveniences enabled by the web.

ASU, which has 12,000 employees, will begin in October rolling out CarePass, a new web-based service from Allviant, that will help the university's workers better manage their healthcare and wellness information.

"People get tons of e-mail. When it comes to our wellness programs, we'd like our employees to get the information they want," said Liz Badalamenti, a registered nurse and ASU Employee Wellness Program manager.

ASU will begin rolling out CarePass in October, first to new employees, and then later to the rest of the workforce. Employees will be able to visit ASU wellness program site and check-off from dozens of wellness and health programs those they're most interested in learning about, such as cancer-related topics, smoking cessation, women's health, and more.

After that, employees will automatically receive information about those programs, including reminders about specific wellness events. Employees choose how they'll receive that information, such via e-mail or text.

By offering CarePass to employees, ASU workers will have more control on when and how they receive information about the more than 175 wellness programs offered at the university's five campuses.

Also, this insight into what employees are most interested in will also assist ASU wellness program managers to plan events and programs based on what employees are seeking most, says Allviant president Lilian Myers.

CarePass is a service relationship management, or SRM, platform, explained Myers. . "This is the opposite of CRM," or customer relationship management, said Myers. "SRM allows the customer to determine when and how they interact with service providers," such as benefits providers, healthcare providers, and others. That includes consumers selecting how they receive health-related information--whether it be via text, email, fax, phone, or a combination of methods-- about new wellness programs from benefit providers, to reminders about medical appointments from their physician offices.

ASU is also planning to offer CarePass to its 69,000 students to help them better manage their relationships with the university's campus health services providers.

Read more about what ASU is doing with CarePass, as well as how other healthcare, banking and government organizations are using new web innovations to improve their customer relationships in an upcoming InformationWeek cover story running Oct. 5.

bMighty has published a report on the secrets of e-mail management. Download the report here. Also, visit bMighty's IT Management How-To Center here.