It doesn’t matter what type of business you operate – over time, as the organization scales, there will no doubt be several changes you’ll need to introduce. Most of the time, these changes are in response to evolving market demands, new customer preferences, or the needs of your employees.
Regardless of the areas you need to modify in the long term, it’s essential that the technology you invest in to support those changes can keep pace. This may mean upgrading financial management tools and services, as well as ensuring your benefits technology continues to support both your HR teams and employees efficiently.
And when it comes to scaling essential business processes, such as payroll and benefits administration, there are a range of strategies you can apply to ensure your technology adapts to your business’s growth, not work against it.
Invest in a Best-of-Breed Benefits Platform
If you consider how many modern businesses structure their operations, more and more are now investing in. This means that there has been an increased reliance on digital technologies to support smooth operations, especially when it comes to HR-related functions.
Part of this support extends to how employee benefits are managed. This is where investing in a best-of-breed benefits platform can prove to be really valuable.
Having a system in place that makes it easy for employees to access when they need it to review their benefits coverage or help make decisions about open enrollment changes is essential. Benefits administration (BenAdmin) platforms that provide this access not only support employees’ ongoing needs but also become a critical support layer for HR teams.
Since these platforms help to automate time-consuming tasks, claims submissions and payroll calculations, it frees up time for HR teams to focus on activities like coordinating recruitment efforts and supporting company culture-building responsibilities.
Avoid One-Size-Fits-All Benefits Implementations
Most businesses have a highly diverse team of employees working for them. They may come from all walks of life, each with varying levels of experience and competencies. With this diversity comes different levels of understanding when it comes to how employee benefits work, as well as optimal ways to configure their coverage options.
Investing in customer-tailored benefits education is crucial to ensure that each of your employees gains a clear understanding of the benefits offered to them and how to maximize their value throughout the year.
By investing in a best-of-breed benefits platform, you’re able to avoid relying on a one-size-fits-all education strategy and give employees a more unique way to learn about and manage their benefits offerings. With the right platform in place, you can provide each employee with real-time access to helpful explainer videos and decision-support tools like plan tier comparisons or monthly premium calculators. This ensures “all” of your teams feel confident about their coverage decisions during new employee onboarding or open enrollment periods.
Make Use of Platform Integrations
Although you may have invested in various technologies to help support your teams, there is nothing more frustrating than having to use multiple platforms, with none of them communicating with one another. Having a benefits platform that’s out of sync with your payroll or insurance providers can actually create more problems than it solves, increasing manual data entry and increasing the likelihood of errors occurring.
By choosing a BenAdmin platform that’s built with seamless integrations into other HR-supporting systems, you can simplify information flows while allowing for more automation in daily workloads.
When integrating benefits technology into your organization, you can ensure that different elements, such as unique eligibility rules or reporting requirements, are integrated from the outset. This can dramatically reduce manual administrative efforts for HR teams, as well as minimize data entry errors when managing multiple submission and reporting requirements.
Design Benefits Offerings Based on Employee Needs
The larger a business becomes, the more employees it brings on. These employees could be sourced locally or hired from different countries with varying levels of health insurance provisions. Because of this, not all the benefits you offer may have the same value to one employee as to another.
However, while your HR teams may be capable of administering benefits to multiple employee types, the larger the company becomes, the more challenging these unique processes are to manage. But instead of needing to manage each benefit type separately, HR teams can leverage best-of-breed BenAdmin platforms to help take the heavy lifting off their shoulders.
For example, with the right solution in place, HR teams can manage different benefit tiers, including separate employee contribution strategies and eligibility rules, all from a single platform.
Another provision that best-of-breed technology allows for is a more simplified administration of voluntary benefit offerings. Because these types of unique plan designs often feature specific waiting periods, tiered coverage levels, and specific contribution rules they can be hard to manage. However, with a highly flexible best-of-breed technology platform, all of these plan elements can be easily configured, automated, and centrally managed within a single system.
All of this saves significant time and resources while ensuring that each employee can utilize benefits offerings tailored to their specific circumstances.
Set Your Company Up for Long-Term Growth
As your business grows, it’s essential to have the right technology strategies in place to support employee needs effectively. By leveraging a benefits platform designed for scalability, you’ll minimize the manual workload placed on your HR teams and employees, allowing them more time to focus on priorities that support the business’s growth efforts.
Author Bio: Frank Mengert
Frank Mengert continues to find success by spotting opportunities where others see nothing. As the founder and CEO of ebm, a leading provider of employee benefits solutions. Frank has built the business by bridging the gap between insurance and technology-driven solutions for brokers, consultants, carriers, and employers nationwide.
(DISCLAIMER: The information in this article does not necessarily reflect the views of The Global Hues. We make no representation or warranty of any kind, express or implied, regarding the accuracy, adequacy, validity, reliability, availability or completeness of any information in this article.)
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