Can We Refuse Health Benefits if EE Ignores OE Requests?
Caroliso
352 Posts
We are nearing the end of an on-line Open Enrollment process for health and transportation benefits that concludes with people providing an electronic signature by entering their user name and SS#. We seem to have a handful of folks who are ignoring our various e-mails to get going and complete it. I've told them that if they don't complete the Open Enrollment, at the least their med/dental elections will revert to what they had this year, and FSA will revert to zero, Even this will cause a problem for us because we will have to manually enter their co-pays in order to process them through payroll.
This annoys me and has me wondering what my options are short of standing outside these people's offices until they finish OE, So two questions.
1) in this state we are required to get EE authorization for payroll deductions., Does that apply to increases to medical premiums for plans they have already elected? This is one reason we might have to go to any lengths to make sure they enroll electronically.
2) Not that I would do this (okay, I'm tempted) but could we deny elective benefits to EEs who didn't comply with online Open Enrollment requirements? (assume we are not talking about people who are prevented through health or other reasons from knowing this is something they have to do, and who have the wherewithall to do it).,
Grrr!!!
This annoys me and has me wondering what my options are short of standing outside these people's offices until they finish OE, So two questions.
1) in this state we are required to get EE authorization for payroll deductions., Does that apply to increases to medical premiums for plans they have already elected? This is one reason we might have to go to any lengths to make sure they enroll electronically.
2) Not that I would do this (okay, I'm tempted) but could we deny elective benefits to EEs who didn't comply with online Open Enrollment requirements? (assume we are not talking about people who are prevented through health or other reasons from knowing this is something they have to do, and who have the wherewithall to do it).,
Grrr!!!
Comments
How accessible are these folks? I would suggest (and I have done this in the past) putting together a summary of their current benefits profile, including a message that their failure to make changes will cause their current plan to role to the next year (with associated cost changes), and ask them to sign. Our SPD allows us to do that.
If your SPD does not have that option, another option might be to check with your insurance company or broker for their experience with other employers. They can be a good source of info.
best wishes.
If your open enrollment package states clearly that all elective benfits will be dropped on Decmeber 31, if enrollment is not complete- then do so. Ours does, although we make allowances for people due to sickness- vacation- training- etc, as long as they let me know in ADVANCE, and we can usually get them done early. You could probably still send a memo indicating the final deadline or discontinuation of benefits.
Good Luck!
One caveat: if your plan would allow you to stop benefits if someone didn't go through the open enrollment process, I would make darn sure that these handful of employees did, in fact, receive your communications about needing to do open enrollment. Otherwise, they can come back and state they were never notified -- which could create another problem.
I understand your frustration in this process -- you wonder sometimes if you're dealing with adults or kindergarten! Good luck!
I will look into the SPD language, that's a good point.
For the last five days of the process i sent daily e-mails alerting the specific folks that their med and dental benefits would roll over, and everything else would be zero'd out, if they didn't enroll by the deadline. The last couple of go-rounds I did a return receipt on the e-mail to make sure people were opening the e-mails.
We wound up with just one person who, while she read my e-mails, didn't get around to the process. I will save that documentation per your suggestions.
It's just unbelievable how much people drag their feet. And of course it's often the same people who have problems with other deadlines at work, HR and otherwise.... I think we need a therapy or other program targeted to those folks....
Carol
best wishes.