With the Platform’s employee self-service tool, employees can easily enroll in their benefits online. The “One-Thought-Per-Screen” design makes it simple, regardless of the employee’s level of expertise with computers. Employees can read more about their plan options, ask questions and watch videos to learn more details about their benefits. The Plan Shopping Application provides detailed comparisons between plans options to ensure that employees select the plan that best meets their needs.

The Platform provides tools to manage enrollment more efficiently – with no paper. HR departments, brokers and carriers use the Platform to:

• Make benefit elections or corrections for employees
• Cancel employees’ benefit elections
• Initiate life events for employees
• Approve benefit elections or changes made by employees
• Administer open enrollment
• View census and benefit reports
• Monitor dependent eligibility
• Manage COBRA eligibility and enrollment

Employers have pre-determined times during which employees can change their benefits. They can define different business rules for each enrollment period, and the Platform is sophisticated enough to understand each employee’s specific scenario. For example, the Platform allows employees to make benefit elections as new hires or during an open enrollment period, but also recognizes that only certain changes are permitted when the employee has a life event, such as a birth or marriage.

• Initial Enrollment: Employees and brokers can complete applications and health statements during the sales process. Once the sale occurs, the Platform automatically calculates group numbers, finalizes benefit elections and sends the data to the carriers’ membership systems.
• New Hire Enrollment: New hires can enroll in benefits anytime during their new hire enrollment period. The Platform calculates wait periods and effective dates automatically to ensure compliance with the employer’s business rules.
• Open Enrollment: The Platform simplifies open enrollment by providing tools to map employees from one plan to another, such as workflow and to-do lists, to e-mail reminders and a wide range of reports.
• Life Events: Employees can make changes to their elections for specific reasons, such as a birth, marriage and military leave. The Platform calculates effective dates and helps employees understand what types of coverage changes are permitted with each type of life event.

The Platform provides a great deal of flexibility when defining business rules for each enrollment period. For example, different new hire rules and open enrollment periods can exist for different types of employees (based upon employee categories like classification and location). In addition, different life event rules can be defined for different types of benefits.