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.