Technology Related to Employee Benefits Administration Has Already Taken off and is Accelerating

Think technology has advanced rapidly over the last decade? Answering yes would be an understatement. Technology is affecting all areas of small and medium-sized businesses, even with employee benefits and benefit administration. The bottom line is that using technology allows a business to administer benefits easier and more quickly to employees at a lower cost.

Throughout this article, I will include quotes from Kris Wood, director of Human Resources for Elizabethtown Community and Technical College (ECTC). This college is one of 16 campuses throughout the state of Kentucky and is part of the Kentucky Community and Technical College System (KCTCS), which has more than 80,000 students attaining higher education. Kentuckiana Business Forum targets businesses up to 250 employees, which ECTC fits into. Kris’s comments apply to most, if not all, readers of this publication.

Today, many businesses give employees the ability to access employment-related data from the comfort of any PC connected to the Internet, whether at home, at work, or at a favorite coffee shop. Want to check how many hours you’ve worked, want to see how much leave time you have accumulated, want to check if a doctor is in your health provider network? All of this and much more can be accomplished using technology, inside or outside of the work environment. This technology has allowed employees to be more closely connected to the benefits given by their company than ever before. Kris Wood, HR director of ECTC, stated “Technology makes HR benefit administration more efficient, and employees like it because things are now available 24/7.”

Moreover, technology has affected and changed all players in the HR benefit arena. From the standpoint of the benefit agency providing the service, it’s in the firm’s best interest to keep up with the competition and to ensure that technology makes benefit administration easier and less expensive. For the provider, technology allows their service to be a simpler sell to businesses. From the small business standpoint, new technology will take many questions away from an already overburdened human resource department, in most cases. Here, employees can access much more common information on their own, without having to contact HR. Many businesses now provide online forms for employees, such as vacation or time off approval, time sheets, applications, and so forth. This very same technology is becoming a selling point for working at a particular company.

If your company hasn’t accepted new technology in benefit administration, it will soon have to. As Len Strazewski of The Rough Notes Company, Inc. states, “..now, COBRA and Flexible Spending Account (FSA) administration, consumer-directed health plans and Health Savings Accounts (HSAs) are among a growing number of services that require automated delivery and administration.” Therefore, with technology and benefits administration, “if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em.” Also many companies and agencies are mandating direct deposit and other online/technology-based benefits and means of administration.

Kris Wood, HR director of ECTC, also stated in an interview that “At first, some employees are frightened about online benefit administration, yet once they try it out, most are very accepting of it.” With that, Kris also stated that after employees become familiar with using the technology, they will later express, “You mean I don’t have to come into your office for that now?”

From the simple to the complex, employees are beginning to expect this type of technology from their employers. For example, think of this situation and how small businesses using technology would assist employees: you’re out on a weekend and unexpectedly begin looking for a new car and find one that fits your need and price. The dealership needs a pay stub before the loan can be processed, yet no one is available in your human resource department. No need to fear, just connect to your employer benefit website, log in, and print your most recent or multiple pay stubs.

Moreover, if an employee wants to see the status of a medical claim, or wants to check the balance of their retirement plan, they can do that themselves with today’s technology. Direct benefit anytime access is a tremendous plus for employees. Finally, Kris Wood, HR director of ECTC, states that “Technology has allowed my office to provide better customer service to employees because of a reduction in paperwork.”

Don’t just think this current technology push related to HR benefit administration is associated with large companies. Many service providers cater to small companies with less than 50 employees. Business Week magazine is a testament to this trend. If you visit http://www.businessweek.com/smallbiz/servicecenter/humanresources.htm, the site offers many services to small businesses, including using technology in human resources. Here, small business owners can utilize tools for virtual HR, job descriptions, and so forth.

This new technology is also very prevalent if you search for HR service/benefit providers. At www.hr-guide.com, under benefits administration, most of the companies listed will mention technology in their description of services provided. When the word technology is not specifically mentioned, either efficiency or cost reduction using the technology is mentioned. Here are just a few from that site:

Ascentis Corporation – Connect, communicate, and control all aspects of HR with HROffice. HROffice eliminates the paper process and builds on the latest technologies from Microsoft for easy integration with those tools HR departments use on a day-to-day basis. Ascentis Corporation, creator of HROffice, is a pioneer in state-of-the-art human resources management systems (HRMS) for small to mid-sized organizations.

Benefits Concepts Inc. – In addition to industry leading technology, Benefit Concepts has a tremendous call center to handle employee inquiries, an administrative team that assists the client’s HR staff, premium accounting functionality, extraordinary on-line history of benefits, elections, communications, reports, and all electronic files.

Employease – Employease simplifies the administration and communication of employee and benefits information by delivering world-class technology without the pain of traditional client/server software.

Remember, like it or not, technology is prevalent and taking over in small to medium-sized business benefit administration.