Understanding Employee Self-Service Benefits Setup
Setting up self-service benefits is a task that should be performed by the system administrator. The administrator can set up the desired features for employee self-service benefit selections. The administrator can also enable security functions to limit employees from viewing or changing other employees' confidential records.
Employees access self-service benefits through a series of web pages on your company's intranet site that enables them to complete such tasks as changing benefit options or changing name, address, and emergency contact information.
Your software provides web pages for all self-service programs, as well as a logon page and a menu page. These pages are fully functional and you can use them without modification. You can also create customized self-service web pages. For example, if you want to put your own company's logo on the web pages, you need to create customized web pages. You can organize your web-based benefits enrollment program under a menu structure based on employment events such as new hire and rehire, and life events such as children or marriage. You might create a menu from which the employee selects the event or reason for changing enrollment. If the employee selects marriage, for example, the version of the web page that allows changes associated with marriage is used.
You can use processing options to set up different versions of the Self-Service Director program (P05410). For example, you might set up custom versions for enrollment event codes that are similar to these versions that are included in your software:
Program Version |
Event Version Code |
|---|---|
New Hire Enrollment |
NHR (New Hire) |
Rehire Enrollment |
RHR (Rehire) |
Marriage |
MAR (Marriage) |
Divorce |
DIV (Divorce) |
Children |
CHD (Children) |
Open Enrollment |
OPN (Open Enrollment) |
Employee self-service benefits setup includes only those instructions that are required to set up employee self-service benefits. These instructions assume that the setup procedures for employee benefits are complete. In some cases, such as setting up benefit plans and plan options, you need to review the existing setup to ensure that self-service considerations are included.
To set up benefit plans that employees can use in self-service, you need to define:
The minimum and maximum number of persons who can be included in benefit plans that cover dependents
Whether to track the primary care physician
Nonparticipating benefit plans
After setting up the Plan Master (P08320), depending on your company setup, you might need to define the benefit plan options that employees can select during each enrollment event. For employee self-service benefits, the benefit plan options might already be set up appropriately. You also need to specify the minimum and maximum number of dependents that are allowable for each health and welfare benefit plan option. You can use this procedure to set up new plan options or change existing options.
If the available options for a plan category include non-participation, you need to set up a nonparticipating plan option. For example, a dental benefit plan might include these plan options:
Dental Coverage - Employee Only
Dental Coverage - Employee and Family
Dental Coverage - Employee and One Dependent
Dental Coverage - No Coverage