Employer decides on the funding levels. Funding levels can be based on total compensation of the employee including vacation or paid time off (PTO).

Funding Methods:

Total Compensation Approach

This is a representation of “total compensation” available to the employee. Please note that special care needs to be taken with vacation benefits when they are translated into benefit dollars due to the fact that employees view vacation as a “right” not a benefit.

Choice Only Approach

Another type of funding method is called “choice only.” This type avoids the use of the total compensation approach and focuses strictly on funding and communication of benefits. eflexgroup.com highly recommends this approach. Within the choice only approach is a method of “steering” employees in selecting benefits called the “modular plan”. The modular plan is an excellent way to avoid adverse selection by steering employees into modules with consistent themes such as dental or family status. An example of this approach is:

Once the funding levels are chosen and insurances and other benefits are determined we move into the phase of designing communication pieces. Once they are approved we move forward to enrollment.

Enrolling the benefit choices. We partner with a company called Bswift and Bswift can provide you with service to enroll the group with all the benefits and selections. This is key in keeping the costs and confusion down. The result is that your benefits will be posted on the web through “My company benefits”. You may see how it works by using the demo username and the password of ssample.

The cost for this service will be determined by Bswift and is dependent on the amount of benefits you would like to enroll. Another approach is printing benefit booklets but this may cost as much or more than Bswift in time and materials and is can not be easily updated or changed.

Employees enroll in their choices with paper or an Internet based system. Data needs to be reviewed for accuracy once enrollment takes place and the choices by employees are reviewed and confirmed. Various methods for this confirmation can occur at the enrollment level, however eflexgroup.com suggests confirmation via e-mail.

Employer receives data from enrollment and downloads to its payroll system.

As the plan year approaches renewal date (within about 4 months of the close of the plan year) the process is started again.