"I haven't been through a busy open enrollment season myself, since at my current job we have a third-party vendor who manages it. I have gone through periods of time when a lot of extra work was added to my plate though. A couple of years ago, a team member quit without any notice. It took about two months for a replacement to be hired and in the meantime, a lot of her work fell to me due to us having similar skills. I couldn't manage everything from my desk and hers, so I had to prioritize. I put together a list of everything we had both been doing and then I went through and labeled each one.
For example, some were necessary for compliance purposes, some were being counted on by another department, and some I labeled "nice but not necessary." Those were tasks that I could put on hold or drop altogether without it causing any negative repercussions to our department or anyone else in the company. I still had a lot of work to get done and ended up putting in some extra hours, but cutting out unnecessary tasks made it manageable and I was able to go back and catch some of them back up once the new team member was ready to get started."
