It is not an easy time to be a human resources professional.
The 2010 passage of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) brought additional reporting, disclosure, and notification requirements. Workload, administrative costs, and compliance risk for human resources teams increased. This legislation only compounded the complex reporting, disclosure, and fiduciary requirements associated with the Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA).
With more information to file, there is now more room for error. And, only adding to the pressure, fines increased too. In early 2016, the cap on penalties for failure to file a required information return with the IRS doubled from $1.5 million to $3 million—with no cap if the failure can be proved intentional.
If today’s political climate is any indication, there are no signs that the benefits administration landscape is going to get less complex any time soon.
But, with the right benefits administration system, things can get easier.
Many human resource professionals recognize this fact and are exploring ways to automate processes to reduce the need for manual data entry and reporting. For some, this means upgrading their benefits administration system to gain better automation capabilities. For others, it is a complete transformation from an old paper-based system.
Many human resource professionals don’t know enough about the options available to choose the right benefits administration system for their organization. As a result, human resources departments sometimes default to
using the benefits administration functions in their payroll system or human capital management (HCM) platform. Sometimes, this choice is the right one, but often it is not—particularly when critical functions cannot be automated.
A hasty decision when selecting benefits software can lead to significant costs in both time and money. With implementation of some larger systems taking close to one year, the trickle-down effect of choosing incorrectly can be enormous in terms of wasted energy and resources.
So, how is an organization to know which technology solution is the right fit? For starters, by knowing its options.
By reading this white paper, you will see why defaulting to an HCM platform for benefits administration may open a window to more errors. You will also learn about the features available in standalone systems, an alternative to HCM systems. Finally, you will know what questions to ask as you begin to evaluate new benefits administration systems.
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