Updating your Employee’s Benefits Information

Keeping employee benefits information fresh and accurate is an important part of benefits administration. It ensures that your team members always have the latest and most accurate details about their benefits coverage.

Remember, any updates to employee details need to be made within a 31-day window from when the changes happen. We wouldn't want anyone to miss out!

Career Events

Updates initiated by the employer are called Career Events, and they can include things like:

• Getting a new job title or promotion
• Getting a salary increase

Life Events

Life is full of changes and some of those changes might affect your benefits coverage. Employees may find themselves with an eligible dependent to add to their plan, or they might need to enroll back into benefits they had previously opted out of.

Here are some of the most common life events that might lead to a change in coverage:

• Marriage
• Cohabitation (cohabitation length varies per carrier)
• Birth of a child
• Legal adoption of a child
• Change of province of residence
• Losing coverage under a partner's plan
  • If an employee had previously opted out of their Health and Dental coverage because they were covered under a spouse/partner’s plan, and if they were to lose that coverage, they would have 31 days from the date of losing coverage to be eligible to opt back into the Health and Dental benefits (without being classified as a late applicant).
  • Losing coverage could be due to a breakup/divorce, or because their spouse/partner no longer works at a company that provides a group benefit plan
  • Reminder: If an employee has not lost that coverage, but simply changes their mind, they will be treated as a late applicant since a life event needs to occur in order to opt back in.

The 31-day rule

We know life moves fast and things change, so remember that all these significant life and career events need to be processed within the magic number: 31 days. This helps prevent any issues with late applications.

Here are some examples to give you a better idea of the 31-day rule:

1. Let's say your employee welcomed a new baby into the world on February 15. Congrats to them! You now have 31 days from the date of birth to enrol your little bundle of joy.
2. If your plan has a 12-month cohabitation minimum and they've been living in domestic bliss with their common-law partner for a continuous 12 months, you'd have 31 days from that 12-month cohabitation anniversary to enrol their partner.

Processing a change

Every insurance company has a PDF change form to help you process updates. After an employee fills this form, you, as an admin, can sign into the insurance company's website and make the changes on their behalf.

With good processes, enough support, and clear communication, companies can make sure employees update their benefits info correctly and quickly. If you need something to help employees understand why it's important to keep life events updated, we got you, just contact us here!

Benefits Plus

Just a friendly reminder: if you're covered by Benefits Plus from Humi, we'll take care of updating any career events for you.

We've also made it easy for employees to request changes themselves. These requests will then make their way to an admin for approval and finally end up with our lovely Benefits Support team, who will process the requested change for you on the carrier’s portal. We've got your back!