Online Benefits Enrollment


By Paul P


Open enrollment can be an exceptionally complex and involved process, consuming months of valuable time and taxing your resources to the breaking point. Open Enrollment is always a hectic time of year when employees have the opportunity to change their benefit plan.

Online benefits enrollment does help organizations. It can significantly reduce the cost of running a human resource department by allowing employees to manage their benefits from the convenience of their desktop. According to Survey reports, more than 44 percent of employers used the Internet for benefits enrollment. At companies with more than 5,000 employees, the rate of usage jumps to 71 percent. Many issues contribute to the rise of online-benefits administration, one of which is the common practice of telecommuting.

According to the survey, telecommuting is up 3 percent nationally in 2002 and is expected to climb an additional 32 percent by 2005. The ideal and essential way for offsite employees to access benefits information from a remote location is through a Web-based solution. As these statistics show, employers reap rewards from online-benefits administration in straightforward ways, including reduced human resources costs, outsourcing of staff functions, and increased employee self service. However, many companies only outsource pieces of their benefits administration functions, rather than the entire process. Industry experts are of the opinion that all human resource functions will be delivered online in the near future.

With Online Benefit Enrollment Employees can easily:

Enroll in flexible spending account (FSA) programs that help them plan for the future further creating a sense of cohesiveness and loyalty. Electronically enroll in a rules-based system that allows only eligible selections to be made by the enrolling employees reducing costly errors and reducing administrative time.

Access and view/edit benefit selections from any computer during the period allowing to compare, analyze and check costs of plans.

Online Benefit Enrollment empowers the Management in:

Reducing open enrollment cycle by deploying web based system and increasing both efficiency and effectiveness. Streamlining the process, save time and eliminate expensive errors by shifting to online rules-based electronic enrollment process. Reducing administrative workload and control costs by empowering employees to manage and update their benefits elections. By setting-up the entire administration approval process for employee, benefit elections prior to updating into HR and payroll reducing overall administrative time and burden.

The trend of shifting to online benefit enrollment is going to increase because of because of the advantages for both employers and employees. Employers have the rewards of employee satisfaction and efficiency can save on printing, and potentially, on call center expense.

Briefly the advantages of Online Benefits of Open Enrollment are:

It automates the tedious benefit enrollment process.

It allows the definition of eligibility criteria for employees who will participate in the open enrollment period. Selection process of real-time benefit plans to be included in open enrollment period Clear, simple instructions on every screen- practical online help ensures that employees quickly feel comfortable working with their own data.


More Resources

Unable to open RSS Feed $XMLfilename with error HTTP ERROR: 404, exiting

More Management Information:

Related Articles


Recognition: A Quick, Low-cost Way to Motivate Employees
Recognizing good performance through praise or other positive action is one of the simplest and most cost-effective ways to motivate people. It provides three major benefits:It lets people know that their performance was valued, and increases the likelihood that they will continue to perform well.
Leadership Skill: How to Handle Difficult Conversations
A good leader has the ability to empower others. It is important that a leader develop people who want to share and help in carrying out the goals of the organization.
Are You Cascading Your Strategy, or Fragmenting It?
INTRODUCTIONThe typical approach executive teams use to cascade, or roll out, their strategic direction is to produce a clear set of goals, objectives, critical success factors or a scorecard and then get each departmental or functional manager to take this on board and customize it for their part of the organisation. The trouble then begins?A TYPICAL APPROACH: EACH DEPARTMENT ADOPTS OR ADAPTS A VERSION OF THE CORPORATE STRATEGYThe first phase of most organisational planning processes is that the organisation's executives design and express a strategic direction using a framework of some kind.
The 70% Solution: Practical Testing and Version Control
"What do you mean you need to push back the launch date?"Says the CEO. Says the CFO.
Employee Motivation: It's More Than A Paycheck
Managers often ask, usually with exasperation, "How can I keep my employees motivated? I pay them decently. What else is there?"Offering competitive salaries is certainly important.
Hold Your Applause!
It's amazing what you can accomplish if you don't care who gets the credit. Harry S Truman. President Truman had decided that Secretary of State, General George Marshall's name should be attached to his plan for massive European relief following World War II.
Spirits in the Corporate Boardroom.......Oh, sure......
There is a growing movement in the spiritual and holistic fields to bring a more metaphysical and human potential approach to the business community. Holism has been intergrating into both the health and mental health professions for many years now.
Quick Tips On Bringing Out The Best In People
Want to bring out the best in people?Edward W. Smith, motivational speaker, author and TV show host, who specializes in quick tips on how to move your life ahead even faster, offers the following advice.
Selecting Top Talent: Improve Your Batting Average
I recently gave a presentation to a group of business and community leaders on how to select talent to grow their organization. Given the expense associated with recruiting top performers and the high cost of making poor choices, you would think that those responsible for hiring would follow a systematic process that results in high quality hiring.
3 Steps You Can Use Developing Leaders In Your Industry
With the economy bordering on a recession, every company is looking for ways to increase revenues while decreasing costs. Some companies believe one of the easiest ways to do this is to cut their employee training budget.
Business Innovation - Improvisation
Creativity can be defined as problem identification and idea generation whilst innovation can be defined as idea selection, development and commercialisation.There are other useful definitions in this field, for example, creativity can be defined as consisting of a number of ideas, a number of diverse ideas and a number of novel ideas.
The Death Spiral
Sometimes things just happen. Maybe we lose focus and take our eyes off the ball.
6 Shared Factors of Successful Executives
These factors where determined by interviews with and books from very successful people. Factors which eminently successful people considered essential were collected and classified.
Knowing versus Doing - Execution In The Workplace
Have you ever worked with someone who always seemed to have the answers; who always seemed to know what should be done; who could always quote the experts view on a certain situation, but for some reason, just couldn't perform as expected?Working with a client last month I was struck by the fact that my client was already very knowledgeable about the issue that we were discussing. As we talked through the situation it was clear to me that my client was well read on this subject.
Prepare A Winning CV
There is every chance that elements of this article may not be appropriate for everyone in every situation - and that's precisely the point! Every situation is different. No two projects are the same.
How To Learn Great Management from Our Kids
Learning comes from many places. And one of the most wondrous opportunities is right in front of us.
Is Chess Good for Management?
The game of chess has been applauded and taught in business school as a game that gingers creative intelligence.Chess is a game involving kings, queens, bishops, knights, castles, and pawns like a real life.
How to Manage Your Most Valuable Assets - People?
People management and leadership has become a major topic of conversation in today's market place and have assumed mythical qualities. Managing you people is not that difficult if you are willing to invest one thing in their development; YOU.
Ten Top Ways for Managers to Motivate Their People
So to help start the ball rolling, here are ten top ways to get your people motivated. Ten small steps for you to start with.
Diversity Training: The Worst Possible Reasons to Request Executive Funding
You're on your organization's diversity committee. You have the best of intentions.