We understand that your benefit program has its own set of complexities and is unique to your company and employees’ needs. Many of these complicated business rules require manual, tedious HR admin work – but what if they could be automated? We shared 7 Examples of How Great Benefits Software Can Automate Complex Benefit Programs in a recent webinar and are recapping it here so you can easily refresh your memory and learn more about what complexities your ben admin system could be simplifying.

Employee populations are not one-size-fits-all. Plan eligibility, costs, communications and other related factors all change depending on employee type. Best-in-class benefits software can identify different employees and configure benefit-related elements uniquely based on that employee’s population type. HR shouldn’t have to manually navigate the different rules for different populations, rather their ben admin system should automate it for them.

It’s also very important that your ben admin system handles your unique rate structures. Whether you have health and wellness participation incentives, screen for tobacco use or are implementing vaccination status rules, your benefits software should be able to automate these rules for you to apply proper cost contributions to each individual employee.

Great benefits technology can support real-time rules definition between different product types during enrollment. This way, the proper eligibilities are available for employees during the shopping experience. For example, if an employee elects an HDHP, they then should have the option to enroll in an HSA as well but employees who do not elect an HDHP should not be given that option. Dependencies should be automated so HR teams don’t even have to think about it during OE.

Real HR time-savings come into play with HR process automation. This means when an employee triggers an “event” such as a tenure change, salary update, or any other change that requires an update to their coverages, those updates are automatically reflected within the system. However, best-in-class software goes a step further and eliminates manual HR processes altogether. Your technology should allow you to create customizable process automations that are activated when an employee triggers a prompting event, thus saving even more valuable HR time.

Some of the biggest pain points with EOI processing are the manual employee form processes, decision delays from carriers and manual HR processes once decisions are made. Automated EOI processing allows employees to fill out their forms with Single Sign-on right within the shopping experience. Additionally, new integrations with carriers allow decisions to be sent directly to HR and the employee when they are made. The platform then updates to include this plan information in real-time to HR doesn’t have to manually key it in.

Voluntary benefits tend to be more complicated than medical or dental. They vary greatly by carrier, so it is important to have a system that is flexible and can accommodate these complexities. Ideally, your system should be able to not only manage the specific requirements of each benefit at the initial election, but also handle ongoing management when employees have changes in eligibility.

Every year as open enrollment comes around, so does an influx of HR admin work. Annual renewal requires a lot of manual HR effort to key in important benefit changes and updates, which takes time and focus away from OE strategizing. Great benefits software should make this process exponentially easier by investing in carrier partnerships and APIs.

For example, PlanSource’s guided renewal tool can save up to 40% of HR time through APIs with our Boost carriers. It’s as easy as entering the group number and the platform automatically pulls and uploads the plans and rates straight from the carrier. Eliminating this industry-wide pain point allows HR to focus on more important OE-related tasks to make sure their employees get the most from their benefits.

Learn more about how great benefits software can simplify benefit complexities and hear firsthand examples from actual PlanSource customers in our on-demand webinar, or schedule a product demo with our team today!