Understanding Benefit Enrollment Events for Self Service

Although you normally set up benefit enrollment events when your benefits administration software is installed, you need to review these specifications when you add benefits self service functionality to your system. When you set up benefit enrollment events, you can use the Benefits Enrollment Setup program (P08500) to define the time period during which an event is open for online changes or enrollments. For example, open enrollment events enable changes from a specific date until another specific date. Other types of events, such as new hire enrollment events, enable changes starting on a variable date, such as the date of hire, and extending for a certain number of days following that date.

When you specify the Event Date value, the system uses the date of a qualifying event as the basis for the opening date for benefits enrollment. For example, if an employee has a new child, the open enrollment period for changing health insurance enrollment can be based on the life event of Children. Typically, an employee might have up to 31 days after the Children event date to change benefits. When you use Event Date as the basis for opening enrollment, you must also specify the number of calendar days that enrollment remains open. You can set up different time periods for the same enrollment event for different benefit groups. For example, open enrollment for salaried employees might be at a different time than open enrollment for executives.