Rollout in two weeks: the concrete week-by-week plan

What two weeks actually means

Two weeks is the typical elapsed time from "we've decided to add this" to "first eligible employees can activate" for a voluntary listing. Co-funded pilots take 4-6 weeks because they require contract review; LSA-eligible category additions take 1-3 weeks depending on your LSA administrator's process. The two-week voluntary plan below is the baseline; the variants table at the end shows how it shifts for the other two structures.

The plan assumes your benefits team has already made the procurement decision — the diligence pack has been read, the security questionnaire is satisfied, the structure is selected. If you're upstream of that, start with the procurement pack and the buyer's guide first.

Week 1 — Setup and internal alignment

Day 1 (Monday) — Kickoff call (45 minutes)

Attendees: Benefits owner, Communications lead, Averyn engagement lead. Output: signed-off rollout calendar, named internal owners, named external comms-launch date.

• Confirm structure: voluntary listing, co-funded pilot, or LSA-eligible (or combination). Confirm eligible-population definition.
• Name internal owners: benefits-portal owner (who actually edits the portal), comms owner (who drafts and sends the announcement), HR escalation contact (for employee questions in week 1).
• Confirm launch date: default Day 8 (start of week 2). Faster possible for voluntary; co-funded sometimes pushes to week 3.
• Confirm comms channels: portal article, intranet post, all-hands or team-meeting mention, manager email cascade. Pick at least two; don't rely on one channel alone.

Day 2-3 (Tuesday-Wednesday) — Portal & comms drafting

Parallel tracks. Outputs: portal listing draft, two comms templates customized for your voice.

• Portal owner: drafts the benefits-portal listing using the standard description we provide. Includes vendor name, eligibility, how to activate, what to expect, and a clear "no firm involvement" note for voluntary listings. Standard format takes ~45 minutes.
• Comms owner: adapts two templates from the procurement pack: the broad announcement (Template A) for the workforce-wide message and either Template B (partner/executive cohort) or Template C (manager-to-employee referral) for a more targeted second send.
• HR escalation contact: reviews the FAQ section of the procurement pack to be ready for week-1 questions. Most questions cluster in 4-5 patterns; the FAQ covers them.

Day 4 (Thursday) — Internal review

Cross-functional review of the portal listing and the comms drafts. Attendees: benefits owner, comms owner, HR escalation contact, legal (if your usual benefits-announcement process requires it). Output: approved comms ready to schedule.

• If your legal review process is a separate workstream, kick it off on Day 2 in parallel rather than waiting for Day 4 — otherwise it becomes the critical-path bottleneck.
• For voluntary listings, the typical legal review is minimal (you're not assuming any plan-sponsor responsibility). For co-funded pilots, the SOW review runs in parallel with this track and is the longer pole.

Day 5 (Friday) — Pre-launch checks

Portal listing published in a staging or hidden state (not yet visible to employees). Comms scheduled to send Day 8. Final pre-launch checklist confirmed.

• Portal owner confirms the listing renders correctly, the activation link works, and the contact information is correct.
• Averyn confirms intake routing — the form, calendar link, and email inbox are all live and monitored.
• Final sign-off email from benefits owner to all named participants confirming launch is on for Day 8.

Week 2 — Launch and early-activation support

Day 8 (Monday) — Launch

Portal listing goes live. First comms send goes out (broad workforce announcement). Calendar holds:

• 9:00 AM local time: portal listing live; comms send scheduled.
• 10:30 AM: 15-minute check-in (benefits owner, comms owner, HR escalation contact) — confirm everything went out clean.
• 2:00 PM: Averyn engagement lead checks intake pipeline; flags any operational issues.
• End of day: first-day metrics summary — portal views, comms opens, any inbound questions to HR or to Averyn.

Day 9-10 (Tuesday-Wednesday) — Question handling

Most week-1 employee questions land in this window. The FAQ from the procurement pack covers ~80% of them. Pattern:

• "Is this confidential?" — yes, structurally; see the privacy section.
• "Does my family member have to be in the same state?" — no; remote-first nationwide.
• "What about the language my parents speak at home?" — English primary, Spanish available, others ask.
• "How does the 90-day window work? What happens after?" — covered in the activation call; continuation is the household's choice at preferred rates.
• "Is this through HR or directly with Averyn?" — directly with Averyn after the portal click-through.

HR escalation contact handles inbound questions using the FAQ. Anything genuinely novel gets routed to Averyn for a written answer within 1 business day, which then becomes a new FAQ entry.

Day 11 (Thursday) — Targeted second send

Second comms send, narrower audience. For most organizations this is the partner/executive cohort send (Template B) or the manager-to-employee referral note (Template C). The broad announcement on Day 8 establishes awareness; the targeted send on Day 11 drives activation in the cohorts that benefit most.

• For professional-services / partnerships: partner-cohort note from the Managing Partner or partner-amenity benefits coordinator. The Template B language is the right starting point.
• For broader workforce orgs: a manager-cascade asking people leaders to mention the benefit one-to-one with team members they suspect might benefit. The Template C language is the right starting point.

Day 12 (Friday) — First-week review

30-minute call: benefits owner, comms owner, Averyn engagement lead. Output: activation count to date, any portal/comms issues identified, any FAQ gaps to fill, calendar for week 3-4 follow-up.

• Typical first-week activation counts: 1-3% of the cohort the comms reached, varying significantly by structure and population. Voluntary listings to a senior cohort often see 2-5% activation in the first week; broad workforce voluntary listings often see 0.5-2% in the first week with a long tail.
• What "good" looks like at end of week 1: activations happening, no portal issues, no comms misfires, HR getting fewer than 5 inbound questions per day, Averyn intake responding within target SLA.
• What "needs attention" looks like: zero activations and no inbound questions (signals comms didn't reach the audience), or many inbound questions on a single topic not in the FAQ (signals a comms clarification needed).

What changes for the other two structures

Co-funded pilot (4-6 weeks total)

Add a parallel SOW-review track running weeks -2 through 0 (before the two-week rollout above). Most enterprises have a standard vendor-onboarding process; the SOW review is 2-4 weeks depending on legal/procurement bandwidth. Once contracted, the two-week rollout proceeds as above, with these adjustments:

• Eligible-population definition is sharper. Pre-funded pools are typically targeted to a defined cohort (recent acute event, executive bench, high-attrition risk group) rather than the full workforce.
• Comms are more curated. Pilot activations are often invitation-based or HR-nominated rather than broad-portal-driven, especially for smaller pools (10 activations or fewer).
• Reporting cadence is set up at launch. Quarterly aggregate report calendar is established in week 1 so the first report lands on a known date.

LSA-eligible category (1-3 weeks)

Faster overall because there's no employer-paid line item, but timing depends on your LSA administrator's category-addition process. Adjustments to the two-week plan:

• Week 0: coordinate with LSA administrator on category-addition mechanics. Most administrators allow caregiving-coordination as a generic wellness category; some require explicit category approval.
• Week 1: instead of portal-listing setup, the work is updating the LSA-eligible-category list and the LSA member-facing materials.
• Week 2: launch communications focus on "you can apply LSA dollars to Averyn" rather than on the benefit existing as a standalone line.

Common failure patterns — and how to avoid them

"We launched but no one knew"

By far the most common pattern. Portal listing went up; no companion comms; activations never materialized. Fix: at minimum, one broad announcement and one targeted-cohort send in the first two weeks. The portal listing alone is not enough.

"The first comms wave was too generic"

A workforce-wide "we added a new benefit" announcement, while necessary for completeness, rarely drives activation on its own — the people who most need it often don't recognize themselves in the description. Pair the broad send with at least one cohort-specific send (partner cohort, manager-cascade to leaders, or a specific HR-identified cohort).

"HR fielded questions HR couldn't answer"

The FAQ in the procurement pack is the prophylactic. HR escalation contact should have read it before launch. Anything outside the FAQ gets routed to Averyn within 1 business day. Don't let HR improvise answers on novel procurement-grade questions — misalignment in week 1 is hard to walk back.

"We never measured whether it worked"

The end-of-week-2 review should already establish the measurement framework for the next 60-90 days: activation count, time-to-first-deliverable, continuation rate, satisfaction (if surveyed). Without those metrics defined up front, the conversation at month 3 ("is this working?") has no grounding.

Consolidated week-by-week checklist (printable)