Article Summary - The HRIS benefits article found below does a good job of laying out the benefits of automating the benefits administration process using an HR Information System. HRIS benefits automation is just one of the many problems an HR solution may assist with. If you find this article helpful you may also want to read, HRIS Benefits Automation Defined or HRMS Software Benefits Statements.
Does your organization manually administer Benefits to all the active employees?
Can your employees change their Benefits elections at their will within no time? Or do they still need to manually process their requests, which consumes their valuable time and thereby reducing their job productivity at the end of the day?
How do you, as an Administrator, handle the complicated and time-consuming task of handling 401k, medical, dental, life, disability, and other non-medical benefits like FSA, Pension plans, etc?
How do you, as an Administrator, successfully provide employee-benefited customized options to all your employees?
Every year, Benefits administration is a Herculean task to all the Benefits Administrators; administering Benefit enrollment to the new hires, allowing open enrollment for all the employees before the start of the next year, and allowing employees to change enrollment throughout the year, etc. If you are doing manually, all the preceding tasks, then there are so many chances of miscalculations or errors without your knowledge. For example, what happens if an employee consistently changes his dependents status and wants to know how much he/she has to pay as a premium? Moreover, think what happens if this is the problem of a few tens out of hundreds of employees in your organization every month. Here, to tell the employee how much premium has to be paid after the new choices have been made, as an Administrator, you need to recalculate every time; this gives a chance for errors to creep-in; taking help of an automated system prevents the errors from creeping-in.
Using HRIS
The only solution to all the preceding problems is a highly efficient Employee Tracking Software, which can process all your employee requests for Benefit elections, re-election, enrollment changes, etc, according to the business rules set by you, as an Administrator. An Employee Management software system, after preset by you, can display all the eligible benefit choices to all your employees according to their eligibility. It allows you to list out all the Benefit Providers, Benefit Plan Years, the premium rates of the plans selected, set eligibility for your employees to elect specific plans, etc, to your employees.
HRIS - Role based Views
An HR software system provides role-based views; users see information only related to them. If you login as an Administrator, you can have access to all the features, options, and employee-related information. Nevertheless, a Manager or Supervisor can access only the employees directly reporting to them. An employee can view only his/her related Benefits information according to the eligibility criteria set by his/her Benefits Administrator.
HRIS - Security Features
Security-wise, an HR software solution is best; as an Administrator, you can mask employees' SSN, their pay, the employee name and address, etc. This kind of security is not possible manually, no matter how hard you try to make it so. Employees are provided a username and password with which he/she can access the system at their convenience, make the changes in their benefit elections or status, etc, and send the same to their approver. The approver, after going through the employee request, can approve and route/ reject/ complete the request at his/her discretion. Every change in the request status is communicated to the employee through email automatically. Therefore, transparency pervades throughout the process and both the employee and the approver are connected to each other through emails until the request process is completed.
HRIS --Transparency
The employee can view, immediately on the screen, how much he/she needs to pay as a premium whenever a new plan is selected. The minimum and maximum rates set by the Benefits Administrator guide them to know how much they need to pay or hsve deducted at the end of the pay period. Since the employer contribution will also be there for some plans, the employee, upon viewing the amount contributed by the employer, can decide whether he/she can go for the plan or not.
Summary
Providing Benefits related information and processing the same for all the employees of an organization manually is a difficult task. Human Resource Information Systems (HRIS) help you to simplify this complex process with accurate calculations; no matter how many times the employee changes his benefits choices throughout the year. Not only can you set and implement business rules, but it also allows you to implement security-related options like masking certain crucial personal information details of the employees. After gathering all the relevant information and doing the Benefit calculation, the HR software allows you to export the same as an update to your database for further reference.
Remember, Benefits administration automation saves you countless hours of manual work and innumerable piles of paperwork.
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