How you Configure Benefit Plans for Selling Time Off

You can configure benefit plans to enable participants to sell their vacation or sick time. You can set up these plans for open enrollment.

This topic provides setup advice on configuring these type of offerings and how you can optionally transfer to Absence Management the absence units that were sold.

Configure the Absence Plan to Integrate with Benefits

When you create or edit an absence plan in Absence Management, in the Entries and Balances tab, select the Enable benefits integration check box. You then associate the absence plan with the benefit plan in the Basic Details step when you create or edit a plan in the Plan Configuration work area.

Modifying the Plan Function or Absence Plan

If a life event is in the Started status, you can't change the absence plan or plan function of the corresponding benefit plan.

With this association in place, participants can see the absence balance before deciding how much to sell. Until the enrollment window is open, participants can continue to make changes to the amount of units they want to sell. If you want to transfer to Absence Management the details about the absence units that were sold, you need to use the Close Enrollments process.

Configure the Benefit Plan Function and Enrollment

When you create or edit a benefit plan, you select either the Vacation sell or the Sick Time Sell plan function. In the Absence Plan list that appears, you can select any of the available absence plans, active as of your session's effective date, and enabled for use with benefits.

In the Enrollment step, you need to select the enrollment rule Current choose only, new can choose. That's because you want participants to always make an explicit choice when selling their time off. The enrollments for these type of plans are only limited to the specific event that has provided an opportunity to sell time off. You can't configure these plans to carry over enrollments into subsequent events. Also, you can't configure default enrollment rules for these plans because selling the absence units is a choice that only participants need to make.

Configure User Values

In the Manage Rate and Coverage Values page, create a user value set. The user value set indicates the time units that participants can sell during enrollment. If you want participants to indicate the pay period in which they want to receive the proceeds from the sale, you create another set of user values. You also have the option of having participants select or enter user values during enrollment. You will need to associate the values with a rate, and payroll period values, with a coverage.

Configure Rates and Coverages

In the Manage Benefit Rates page, you create a rate for the plan. You associate the user value set with the rate. The rates that you create for plans configured to sell time off are set to Primary automatically because you want participants to select or enter a value during enrollment. You can use variable rates to vary the display of user values based on eligibility. The treatment code is automatically set to Replace.

On the Manage Benefit Coverage page, you create a coverage and associate with it, the user value set, if required. For example, you created a user value set to indicate the payroll periods in which participants would like to receive proceeds from the sale. You need to associate this user value set with the coverage.

How It Works for Participants and Administrators

In the Self Service pages, eligible participants can sell time during an active enrollment window. They select the relevant benefit plan that's configured for selling time off. Administrators can also sell time on behalf of participants in the Enrollment work area.

After the enrollment, as an administrator, you can run the Close Enrollment process if you want to transfer the absence balance to Absence Management. You can find the Close Enrollment process in the Processes tab of the Evaluation and Reporting work area.