Newer employees might not fully understand all of the implications of the benefits package at a certain company: perhaps they simply don’t have need of all of the different protections included, or they haven’t received enough information about them to take part in them fully. In either case, HR managers should take it upon themselves to solve the problem with efficient use of HR software.
Writing for The Wall Street Journal, Eleanor Blayney of the Certified Financial Planner Board of Standards, recently wrote about the tendency in some workers to ignore important benefits they are entitled to and not sign up for them, leading them to miss out on important rewards.
Citing information from the Employee Benefit and Research Institute (EBRI) Blayney gives the example of unused health care benefits as one kind of wasted employee credit.
“When you consider that HSAs are one of the most supercharged benefits of them all, given their triple-play tax savings (pretax contributions, tax-free growth, tax-free withdrawal), it does not make sense that participants would not fund the account to its maximum,” she says.
Another benefit that employees could overlook is the company 401(k) plan, which goes unnoticed in many cases. For this particular benefit, it may help to present employees with easy-to-understand information about these accounts and tie them more specifically to the program in your workplace. This could include educating them as to what they need to consider before enrolling and what choices they have within the 401(k) plan provided.
Work with an HR consulting company to make sure that the different processes you need to manage are all functioning at their peak and deliver the most value to all participants. Accounting for all employees efficiently helps the company HR department deliver more accurate service to everyone.