Dive Brief:

• It may be hard to believe, but some HR departments (mainly smaller businesses) are still processing the benefits enrollment process using paper — much to their financial detriment, according to an expert writing at Employee Benefits News.

• Andrew Brickman, director of Benefits Administration at Corporate Synergies, an employee benefits and insurance broker, says employers still relying on paper, rather than automating the process, should understand that they are letting dollars slip out the door. 

• Apart from potentially missing valuable data, storing paper documents also is very expensive (filing cabinets, paper, printer ink and maintenance costs). Instead, Brickman writes that a far better option is moving to a benefits administration platform for automating the process, ensuring both time and money savings.

Dive Insight:

Brickman singles out several advantage of an automated enrollment systems. For one, they greatly reduce errors by offering a rules-based enrollment engine. Effective enrollment systems are also intuitive and very user friendly, while decision-support tools for employees are getting slicker every year.

With apps and mobile devices ubiquitous today, employees are primed for an on-demand experience, and delivering targeted communications during enrollment periods can meet that need, while it also reinforces important benefit reminders, Warner writes.

He also mentions are such as regulatory compliance, and medical insurance waivers and enrollments. Automation also greatly improves ease of administration (life event changes and new-hire enrollments) through tools such as dashboards and employee self-service options. In fact, automating benefits can deliver the right tools and information employees need to make the best healthcare decisions - a serious cost factor for today's small and medium employer.