Employees enroll in benefits throughout the year. And no matter, if they are new hires, newly eligible or are going through annual enrollment, making benefits decisions, is important for employees. It’s also important to the employer because benefits enrollment is part of each employee’s individual, overall experience with your company. And these days, that experience matters more than ever.
While it’s true that employees don’t generally get excited when benefits are managed well, they will notice if they are managed badly. The solution is to use benefits software to automate and improve the benefits management process, especially for employees working in the field.
What is Benefits Management Software?
Benefits management software is an online system of record for all things benefits. It records and holds elections, interfaces with your payroll system for deductions and provides the data for carrier files. The employer uses the system for administration, and employees use it to make elections and changes and view their coverage. Employees can also input elections.
The following are three benefits of managing your organization’s benefits enrollment with cloud-based benefits software.
24/7 Access to Information for Everyone
With a self-service portal, employees can access and compare plans, make selections and review current benefits all in one central platform 24/7 via desktop or on a mobile device. This ensures that employees working in a field without a company computer can see their options and make their choices. They can also share benefits information with their spouse.
As the administrator, 24/7 access may not be your number-one requirement, but it does mean you can manage the benefits when it’s convenient without having to get employees to complete paper enrollment forms. You can check on the status of enrollments and elections, send communications and even run reports as necessary.
Your Employees Expect It
Many of the interactions we have these days are online. From shopping and researching our next vacation to doing our banking, we all rely on apps and web-based content to get the information we need and make any number of transactions. Employees want the same experience for their benefits communications. When surveyed, most employees wanted digital delivery of benefits information. According to MetLife, your employees’ top preferred channels for benefits communication are:
- 50% Online Portal
- 40% Email
Employees don’t want to do paper enrollments or read a lot of paper materials. That’s why it makes sense to use a cloud-based benefits management system.
It Makes Your Life Easier
No matter the size of your company, managing benefits enrollments and changes on paper wastes time and opens up the possibility of errors. Having a cloud-based system makes it easy for you as the administrator to manage eligibility and enrollments. When all the data is in one place you can easily review and manage your program.
And that includes compliance requirements. Having a system of record means you have access to the benefits offered and coverage information necessary for ACA reporting.
With streamlined benefits management software, employees have an easier way to manage their benefits, and companies can spend more time managing and growing their businesses.
Interested in seeing how Arcoro Benefits Management and Core HR work together? Ask for a demo today.
