Erin Barry
As we approach the year-end, it's a good time to start preparing for your annual open enrollment period for employee benefits. We here at Dominion Payroll understand that open enrollment can be stressful, and our team of Benefits Specialists is here to ease that burden and ensure a seamless enrollment period for you and your employees.
Getting Started with Benefits Administration and Employee Self-Service Portals
If you are using our Benefits Administration service with Employee Self-Service Portals, your designated Benefits Specialist will reach out to you 60-90 days before your renewal date. This early contact allows us to gather the necessary information about your upcoming renewal, including decisions on renewing current plans, switching insurance carriers, or adding new benefit offerings. We'll also be asking you to provide benefit plan premiums with a detailed breakdown of monthly costs for both employees and employers. Additionally, we will need to know your anticipated open enrollment dates to create an accurate project timeline.
To ensure we have enough time to build or update your plans and prepare your open enrollment portal, we request that you provide renewal information at least two weeks before the portal opens. This period allows us to set up your plans, create a test open enrollment portal, and give you sufficient time to review and test prior to opening to your employees.
Reviewing Your Test Portal
During your test portal review, we ask that you verify that all benefit plans are displayed correctly with accurate rates and all plan dependencies are working correctly. Ensure that any required demographic information for dependents is being captured and any plans requiring Evidence of Insurability have the correct rules in place. Confirm that all messages and documents in your portal are accurate and up-to-date. We recommend testing various scenarios to help identify any setup issues before the portal is opened to employees.
Once you approve the portal setup, we can schedule it to open for all eligible employees on your chosen date. We can also send email notifications to employees when the portal opens and reminders to those who have not submitted their benefit options.
Managing Enrollment and Post-Enrollment with Our Enrollment Management Dashboard
Our Enrollment Management Dashboard provides real-time insight into each employee's enrollment status, ensuring you know exactly where everyone on your team is in the process. Once an employee submits their elections, an e-signed copy of their Benefit Confirmation Statement is saved to their Employee Documents folder for both their records and yours.
After open enrollment ends, all elections must be approved in the Enrollment Management Dashboard in order for them to generate reports and initiate payroll deductions. The Benefits Plan Detail report will give you all the information needed to enroll employees directly with carriers. If you use our Carrier Connection service, we will coordinate the open enrollment files with your insurance carriers.
Setting Up New Hire and Qualifying Life Events Portal
In addition to the open enrollment portals, we will set up New Hire and Qualifying Life Event Portals for the new plan year. These portals will open based on the employee's hire date or qualifying life event date in isolved. Personalized email notifications can be configured to inform employees of an enrollment period availability and any supporting documents uploaded by the employee through the Life Events Wizard are automatically added to their Employee Documents folder for easy access.
Your Dominion Payroll Support Team
Your designated Benefits Specialist will guide you through every step of the renewal process, addressing all technical questions quickly to ensure a smooth open enrollment. If you have any questions about the Benefits services that Dominion Payroll offers, please reach out to us at 877.DPS.PAYU or customerservice@dominionpayroll.com and we'll happily connect you to your HCM Sales Consultant to find the solution that fits your specific needs.
With Dominion Payroll, you can look forward to a stress-free open enrollment period and feel confident that your employees' benefits are managed efficiently and accurately.