Here’s what’s NOT news:

It’s not news that HCM software saves HR hours of busy work.

It’s not news that HCM software improves your employees’ job satisfaction.

It’s not news that HCM software is invaluable to Open Enrollment, especially as OE goes digital.

So, what is the news? New integrations can make adding a voluntary benefit to your HCM nearly instantaneous.

How is that possible? Let’s back up a few steps.

HCM, HR, and OE

Starting at the beginning, HCM stands for Human Capital Management. HCM software includes functions that touch on every stage of your employee experience, including:

• Benefits

• HR compliance

• Leave management

• Payroll

• Recruiting and hiring

• Talent review

• Timekeeping

• Workforce rewards

Encompassing those functions in one integrated, automated system benefits both HR and employees:

• For HR, it centralizes all employee records to make every HR function smoother and quicker. For example, coordinating timesheets with payroll used to be done manually. Now, it’s automatic, saving hours of tedious, error-prone work.
• For employees, it enables Employee Self Service (ESS). Employees can access their records and manage their benefits on their own time.

When it comes to Open Enrollment, those benefits are even more pronounced. And they apply whether a business uses a full-service HCM platform or smaller benefits administration software.

Do you remember paper enrollment forms? It took endless time for HR to print, distribute, collect, collate the information, and send it to the insurance carrier. (Assuming they could decipher the employee’s handwriting!) Now, it’s all done quickly and efficiently on a benefits platform. And that’s just one example of how online enrollment relieves a tremendous burden from HR.

For employees, remote access makes their decisions easier. They can sit down with their spouse, look over information at their leisure, choose a plan, and enroll when they’re ready. And online platforms allow voluntary benefits to be offered side by side with core benefits, helping employees understand and enroll in the full range of benefits being offered to them.

The learning curve

But while online benefits administration has tremendous benefits, it can be challenging to get off the ground:

1. Time - It can take considerable time for HR or their technical support to set up a new benefit and enrollment screen on the back end.
2. Heavy impact - There can be a learning curve when setting up benefits, and unclear or ineffective enrollment page setup can drive down enrollment for that benefit.

“Recently, we had two groups offering Total Pet Plan,” explains Becky Schaen, PBS Marketing Manager. “They were using the same HCM software, but they set up the benefits page completely differently. One group saw a 1% enrollment rate while the other group had a 15% enrollment rate.”

It was clear to Becky and the Pet Benefit Solutions team that we needed to address these issues for our pet benefits to be most successful.

Total Pet Plan is easy

“From the start, we designed Total Pet Plan to be easy for HR to administer and easy for employees to enroll,” says Becky.

Total Pet Plan is Pet Benefit Solutions’ pet care bundle. For one low price and one simple setup, it offers:

• Discounts on veterinary care
• Discounts on pet products
• 24/7 pet telehealth
• Lost pet recovery service

Total Pet Plan is simple! Employees choose from a single or family plan, so it’s just two plan types. The price is the same for every employee; no quotes needed.

These features make building online enrollment super easy for Total Pet. Once it’s added into the HCM software, all the ben admin can be done on the back-end. Employees enroll in Total Pet through the benefits platform without coming to the PBS website. The software can be used to export a simple enrollment file or to turn on an EDI feed.

These features make Total Pet Plan administration and enrollment quick and easy, but what about the setup?

Turnkey Implementation

“We want the Total Pet Plan implementation to be nearly turnkey,” says Becky, “so we put the investment forward and get the work done ahead of time.”

Pet Benefit Solutions partners with popular benefits software companies to create pre-built enrollment experiences and/or EDI feeds for Total Pet. We have formal integrations with nearly twenty platforms, including BSwift, Corestream, and PrismHR. If you’re doing the build on your own, it can be as simple as a few clicks. And if your software provider or benefits broker is doing the legwork, you can rest assured knowing they have access to best-in-practice employee enrollment screens and pre-approved file templates.

And for companies using other popular platforms, we’re working to make it simple and successful for them, too. We collect data from all groups, including screenshots, feedback, and enrollment rates. With this information, we can learn from companies’ great experiences. “There’s no need to reinvent the wheel,” Becky explains.

We’re creating guides to explain exactly how to set up our plans within those benefits’ software. The guides have detailed instructions for the enrollment screen, including sample text and where the text should go.

Figure 1: Example of a Total Pet Plan enrollment page

Not only does this take work off HR and their benefits support team, but it ensures the best possible employee experience.

“Our 2022 goal is to create a guide for every HCM platform that our clients use,” concludes Becky. “Total Pet Plan should be the easiest voluntary benefit your company has ever implemented!”