Open Enrollment is a stressful time period for both HR teams and employees. Maintaining compliance with ACA requirements and ensuring all eligible employees have the information they need for benefits election requires a lot of planning and review sessions with brokers, leaders and employees alike. On top of this, HR teams are tasked with navigating enrollment platforms, translating information from various vendors and answering questions from employees.
Take a deep breath: with proper configuration within Workday®, you don’t need to dread Open Enrollment.
This year, your HRIS team can plan for a more seamless experience by conducting Open Enrollment through Workday® Benefits.
Setting Up the Benefits Module
If you’re new to Workday, you may remember seeing a quick demo of the Benefits Module during your Phase 1 implementation. The module is automatically available as part of Core HCM, but requires a full build to be functional for your organization. Thankfully, most of the work should have been done during implementation.
Workday® has built the Benefits Module to be incredibly flexible to the needs of your company and your workforce, but it’s up to you what components are included and integrated. There is no such thing as too much information when rolling out Benefits. Make sure to list all of your requirements upfront, come prepared with a layout to organize your building process – and don’t hesitate to ask questions! Being an active participant in the build ensures that the module is set up to make your team successful.
Features Included in the Benefits Module
In addition to Open Enrollment, the Benefits Module also includes the ability to manage payroll, benefits administration, compliance and reporting.
The benefit categories in Workday include:
- Healthcare (Medical, Dental, Vision, Critical Illness)
- Health Savings Accounts
- Flexible Spending Accounts
- Retirement Plans
- Insurance (Basic Life, AD&D, Voluntary Life, Short Term Disability, Long Term Disability)
- Employee Assistance Programs
- LegalShield
- Other employee benefits like parking
ACA Compliance
The ACA function is one of the most underutilized features of Workday® Benefits, typically due to hesitation in using a new system to manage such a complex, federal requirement. Once you get past that hesitation, you’ll find that Workday® makes it easy to maintain ACA compliance within one system, without having to use a third party.
The Module enables your organization to monitor compliance by tracking, managing and analyzing ACA-related information, then generating reports for a quick review. You can also generate and electronically file any necessary IRS forms directly within the system. To simplify the benefits setup process for Open Enrollment, the ACA function also helps determine employee eligibility for coverage.
The Employee Experience
Not only does Workday® Benefits make it easier for your HRIS team to set up for Open Enrollment, it also provides an intuitive and user friendly experience for your employees. How often can you say that about Open Enrollment systems?
The benefits election process is made easy for employees by:
- Being mobile-friendly, making it easy to access benefits and change elections any time (especially great with a remote or hybrid workforce)
- Providing the ability to update benefits after major life events directly in the system, rather than having to request forms from HR or insurance representatives
- Including decision support tools that assist employees in making suitable benefit selections
Direct Integrations with Benefit Vendors
Workday® delivers over 300 prebuilt benefits integrations that support most major insurance providers. With Workday® Benefits, your information is seamlessly passed to each vendor on a cadence that you choose; no more downloading and uploading data via external sites. Integrations with new vendors are fully customizable, meaning you can ensure a more seamless benefits experience for your employees.
Get Full Support for Workday® Benefits
Workday® Benefits is an incredibly valuable tool for HRIS teams and makes for a much less stressful Open Enrollment season. As you start preparing for benefits enrollment this fall, make sure your team and your employees are set up for success by building out the functionality to your organization’s specifications.
If you need any help, Syssero has experience providing troubleshooting support, setting up Open Enrollment and ACA functions and building integrations for current and future vendors. Let us know how we can help at info@syssero.com.