This component performs the task of enrolling employees in the Benefits plan. If the employee wants to enroll himself/herself in the plan then he will have to follow the Employee self-service route. The following activities comprise this component,

• Enroll employee in plan

• Enroll in a full-flex plan

• Record cobra acceptance

• Record Cobra premium receipts

• Record waiver from plan

Enroll employee in plan

This activity enables an employee to enroll himself for different plans. An employee can enroll himself for various plans like the Health plan, Disability Plan, Savings Plan etc. However the employee must be eligible to be enrolled in that particular plan. This activity can be used to select a plan for enrollment, enroll dependants, declare beneficiaries and enroll in various types of plans. The following are the prerequisites to enroll an employee in a plan,

The various plans available for the employee must have been defined in the “Create Benefit Plan” activity

The Plan should be marked for Employee Self Service in the “Create Benefit Plan” activity

The eligibility of the employees for the various plans must have been defined in the “Create Participant Eligibility” activity

Enroll in a full-flex plan

This activity enables the user to compute and view coverage details for the following,

• Individual Plan

• Combination of Plans

• Overall summary of coverage details for the combination of plans specified

The prerequisites for enrolling an employee in a full flex plan are,

• Benefit plans must have been defined in the “Create Benefit Plan” activity

• The employee must be eligible for enrolling in the selected plan

• The Benefit Plan should be marked for Full Flex (Cafeteria Planning) in “Create Benefits Plan” activity.

The user can specify and compute the details for all the plans in which you want to enroll. Moreover you can also compute and view the complete summary of the total availed amount, which you can avail from all the selected plans either in terms of amount or credit points or both. The system will also display the number of unavailed credits if any.

Record COBRA Acceptance

In order to comprehend what this activity does, it is imperative for us to know what COBRA means. COBRA (Consolidated Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1985) provides the right to temporarily continue enjoying coverage under a group health plan at group rates. This indicates that under the act, an employee, his/her spouse or dependant children etc. can continue enjoying the benefits of enrollment for a specified period even after the employee leaves the organization. In order to record COBRA acceptance the following have to be specified,

• The specific cobra enabled plan in which you want to enroll

• The qualifying event, which entitles the employee for enrollment in the cobra, enabled plans. The qualifying events can be instances like, separation or bankruptcy filing by the plan sponsor.

• The acceptance date, which is the date from which the enrollment in the plan must take effect.

• The participation date, which indicates the date from which the employee can enroll in the plan.

 Record COBRA Premium Receipts

This activity enables you to record COBRA premium receipts for the plans in which you have enrolled for a specific premium period. In order to record COBRA premium receipts the following have to be specified,

• The premium period for which you have to pay the premium for a plan.

Apart from recording the premium for various plans, you can also view the premium details for a specified premium period. For a selected premium period, the system displays the details like the amount paid for various plans, the service charges and the payment details like the check number, bank name etc.

Record Waiver from Plan

This activity enables the employee to record the reasons for waiving from a plan i.e. the reason for which the user is not willing to enroll in the plan. Recording waiver reasons involves specifying the plans that you want to waive from enrolling and the reasons thereof.  Waive reasons can be “Change in dependents expected”, “Change of residence expected”, “Enrolled in other plans”, “Member of a certain union”, “Personal reasons” etc.

The most important prerequisite for all these activities is that the employee must be eligible to enroll in the plan.

Getting familiar with the activities inside

The following table lists the pages involved in enrolling a plan.