We understand that OE season can be a stressful time of year.
We are here to help you with your Workday Open Enrollment configuration, so you can focus on your employee’s needs. Below are some tips and tricks to ensure a smooth OE!
Click here to learn more about how we support your Open Enrollment.
1. Benefit Configuration Health Check
Have you had the opportunity to audit your current configuration? You don’t want to carry existing issues into the next plan year, so this is a great first step in open enrollment preparation. This will help you identify existing issues with your current configuration and create opportunities to automate manual processes. This would include a thorough review of items including, but not limited to:
- Benefit Groups
- Coverage Types
- Benefit Plans
- Enrollment Events
- Elections
- Relevant Business Processes
- COBRA
- Dependents & Beneficiaries
- Coverage Targets
- Rates
- Enrollment Event Rules
- Evidence of Insurability
- Earnings & Deductions
- ACA
2. Reporting
Running some simple audits can help you find some common roadblocks to a successful open enrollment.
3. Configuration Tips
Here are some helpful tips to make your open enrollment easier:
4. Integrations
You may have many different integrations with insurance carriers to manage. When prepping for open enrollment, keep in mind the following:
- Adding or changing carriers and need a new integration set-up? It typically takes 3 months to set-up a new integration file, so it is important to engage integration support as early as possible.
- The following actions will impact your file feeds. Ensure these are updated according to your carrier’s specifications:
- Adding, removing, updating or splitting benefit plans
- Updating Benefit Coverage Targets or Tiers
- Changing deductions for non-health care plans affects payroll and third-party payroll integrations
- Plans, Class and Account Structures based on demographic factors such as organizations or benefit plans
- Typically, insurance carriers need your open enrollment file no later than the first week of December. Keep this in mind for your project timeline!
- Have your notification preferences changed? This is a great time to review and change these settings.
- No carrier or benefit plan changes? Altura offers support to manage and coordinate OE integrations even when no changes are necessary. We communicate with vendors and maintain vendor OE deadlines, requested temporary filenames and file scheduling changes, additional ad-hoc runs for OE file and blackout periods, and ongoing re-scheduling for the new OE year ensuring Production schedules resume smoothly.
5. Payroll
Make sure those deductions are correct! Benefits and payroll should work hand-in-hand to ensure a successful open enrollment.
6. ACA Ties to Open Enrollment
When it comes to ACA, make sure that employees who averaged at least 30 hours per week are in the appropriate benefit group. This ensures they are offered the correct level of coverage. Also, don’t forget to update your ACA configuration to include any new earnings codes that count toward ACA hour calculations.
…7? Testing!
So, maybe there are actually *7* must-do’s for OE. Once you have your updates configured – test, test, and test again! Some configuration errors may force you to rescind Open Enrollment and start all over again! So, measure twice and cut once!
Have questions about Workday’s Benefits module? Contact our experts.
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