HR is no longer an administrative field, but a highly strategic one. HR leaders cite their top priorities as building critical skills and competencies and organizational design and change management in 2022 – not benefits administration. However, as these teams continue to be spread thin how can they get everything done?

Benefits outsourcing frees us HR time by acting as an extension of your team and relieving you of your basic benefits administration tasks. Relying on industry experts to handle your day-to-day ben admin duties can not only reduce overall risk but provide cost savings as well. Keep reading to understand just how much benefits outsourcing could take off your plate.

For most HR teams, daily ben admin tasks include:

• General system maintenance
• Urgent eligibility processing
• Answering employee questions

These basic items can take anywhere from a few minutes to a few hours depending on the day and number of requests received. Additionally, these items often come without warning and can easily derail your workday by distracting you from other pertinent tasks. A best-in-class benefits outsourcing partner can manage these items and create a branded employee contact center to address employee benefit questions and concerns.

COBRA enrollment and administration is another daily pain-point for many HR leaders. However, with benefits outsourcing you can reduce risk and ensure compliance while staying focused on your business. This includes sending notices in response to qualifying events, processing elections and payments, managing the eligibility timeline, billing enrollees, providing reporting and auditing, and answering questions.

On a weekly basis, HR has even more administrative tasks from eligibility and payroll processing to managing carrier transactions and data exchange discrepancies. This list includes:

• New hire and life event processing
• Dependent document verification for life events
• Evidence of Insurability processing
• HR/Payroll import of demographic changes
• Payroll deductions export
• Enrollment transactions to insurance carriers
• Resolution of data exchange discrepancies

New hire and life event processing takes up a lot of time, effort and requires attention to detail. Dependent verification is just as time-consuming and can be very costly if mistakes are made. A benefit outsourcing partner not only has the expertise to handle this, but the technology to do it faster with fewer inaccuracies than HR teams on their own.

EOI processing is another weekly task that must be done precisely. The evidence of insurability process is difficult because it requires HR to get accurate paperwork from employees to carriers then review and report out the carrier responses. Real-time APIs for EOI processing can drastically streamline this process, or you may choose to outsource EOI processing altogether to a trusted partner. That, along with outsourcing payroll imports and deductions, can free up more time to focus on recruitment and retention strategies instead.

Benefit outsourcing can also eliminate time-consuming monthly billing reconciliations and payments. Most HR teams have a monthly to-do list that includes:

• List-bill discrepancy identification and reconciliation
• Self-bill creation
• Consolidated billing and financial reporting
• Billing payments to carriers
• COBRA premium remittance to client
• COBRA auditing

Best-in-class partners can gather your carrier bills, audit and reconcile list-bills, generate and consolidate invoices and even simplify your carrier billing payment process. This not only saves time and reduces stress as HR teams no longer have to manage this tedious process, but also mitigates risk by ensuring correct premium payments are made to insurance carriers.

One of the most time-consuming quarterly admin tasks HR teams face is audits that can distract from other big events such as open enrollment. This list includes:

• Medical, dental and vision carrier audits
• Payroll discrepancy reporting
• Business reviews with your HR leaders.

Annually, HR must go through:

• System setup and configuration changes
• Post-OE data exchange and audit with carriers
• Post-OE payroll audit

It’s important that all these quarterly and annual audits and reports be accurate to remain compliant and minimize risk. Outsourcing your ben admin to experts can give HR peace of mind that everything is done precisely.

Watch this webinar to learn how outsourcing can mitigate risk and what to look for in an outsourcing partner. Additionally, check out our Benefits Outsourcing Guide for key considerations, best practices and what kind of results you can expect to see when outsourcing part or all of your employee benefits program.