What to Look For When Selecting Online Benefits Enrollment Software

With rising healthcare costs and increasing compliance demands, benefits management software is emerging as a must-have system in the HR technology suite.

Whether you are a healthcare broker looking to provide some added solutions to their clients, or HR professionals beginning their search for the best online benefits enrollment system, here are 10 feature considerations that make the difference between a one-trick pony and a true cost-cutting business solution.

1. Employee Self-Service Online Enrollment 

Some HR pros cringe at the thought of employee self-service, questioning whether or not their employee population is tech-savvy enough to complete an online enrollment. While there will always be an upfront investment in system education, the efficiency gains in time and labor by having employees input their own elections are a strong argument for employee self-service. In some cases, employers have reduced their open enrollment timeline by 75% with employee self-service. (Click Here for the Business Case for Toyotomi of America and their online enrollment adoption experience)

Furthermore, benefits election is a family decision. Sometimes an employee and his or her spouse may want to make their elections at home where they can review their options and make a joint decision.

Related Blog: What’s the ROI on an Online Benefits Enrollment System

2. Intuitive User Interface

If you are confused by the process and the software screens during the demo, your employees will be as well. There is such a thing as too much information. Your employees’ goals are to make informed benefit elections. For this they need:

• Side-by-side plan comparison screens for comparing deductions, copays, premium shares, etc.
• Accessible FAQs

Give employees the information they need to make the decision. Beyond that, too much information and flashing lights can lead to stalls and unnecessary confusion in the enrollment process.

3. Electronic Communications Library

There are standard documents to which your employees will need access, such as summary plan descriptions, summaries of benefits and coverage, full-time student exemption forms, etc..

A good online benefits enrollment software will provide you the means to post documents electronically for employee self-service access, and help you streamline your communications while cutting back on printing costs.

4. Automated Administrator Notifications

With ongoing new-hires and qualifying life events throughout the year, employees will be routinely coming into the system to update their elections. Online benefits enrollment systems that have built in notifications and automated emails will keep changes in your member within your periphery.

5. Automated Carrier Interfacing

Most health insurance carriers will accept 834 files, or electronic HIPPA files, for employers with 50 or more members. This mitigates the need for HR to login to multiple carrier websites and manually update member information. One employer of 400 recovered 2 weeks of productivity for the HR department with this feature. It is a huge time saver.

Furthermore, ask the benefits software vendor if their carrier integration is limited to their list of partners, or if they will build out the integration with whom you already have your insurance. Some vendors will charge extra implementation fees for each new carrier for which they are developing an integration.

6. Automated Payroll Integration

Benefits administration software that integrates with payroll has the ability to automate new premium deductions and reduce redundant data entry and manual processes. This is another time-saving feature.

7. Integrated Affordable Care Act Administration

There are specific dates and enrollment information that Applicable Large Employers need to capture in order to complete their annual IRS reporting. Evaluate a benefits software vendor’s capabilities to either integrate with a full-service compliance solution, or capture and export the necessary information an employer needs for annual Obamacare reporting.

Related Blog: What to Look For in an Obamacare Software Solution

8. Additional Administrative Support Services

Consolidating outsourced services to a common vendor is another means of reducing inefficiencies and labor costs to benefits management. If your employee benefits software vendor has administrative services such as COBRA, Flex Spending, HRA, and HSA administration, they’ll be able to leverage the data in your system to manage the services. Again this reduces the exchange of manual reports, and the need for managing multiple vendors.

Carrier Billing Reconciliation is another monthly task that vendors can easily complete with the data housed in an online benefits system.

9. Customer Service Hotline

Employees will inevitably forget their passwords or run into obstacles while learning the system. An accessible and toll-free customer service hotline will keep employees engaged with the system and prevent HR administrators from getting sucked into tech-support.

10. Third Party Contracting

Increasing numbers of health insurance brokers are offering benefits management technology to service their employers at no extra cost to their clients. This might be a means of offsetting or, better yet offloading, the costs of implementing your next online benefits enrollment system. While rebating restrictions prevent brokers from offering free add-ons or reduced pricing in services outside of the scope of managing and administering benefits, many are incorporating technology resources to provide further value to their clients.