Ohio Public School System 

A school district that serves more than 16,000 students.  The school system employs over 3,000 employees. 

Note : 
Due to the client’s privacy, all references to their identity have been removed from this study.

Challenges

• Communicating and educating the new High-Deductible Health plan. 
• Concerns of employees’ understanding the changes to the benefits plan. 
• Explaining new limited FSA.
• Introducing a new STD & LTD benefit that interacts with STERS.
• Different methods for signing up for each benefit (mostly paper apps).
• Inconsistent offerings of voluntary benefits.
• Enforcing rules: duplicate coverage, HSA, eligible dependents.
• Inaccurate filings of COBRA and leave of absence administration.

Background

• Previously the HR team enrolled via many different mediums: paper, direct sign-ups on the carriers enrollment portal, and also employees were sent directly to the carrier to enroll. 
• Paper applications were returned to HR. HR distributed to the carriers. HR then entered deductions into payroll. Little to no communication was given to the employees.  

Solution

• EBC put in place an electronic web-based enrollment platform with benefits administration at no cost to the school system. 
• Partnering with EBC allowed the client to simplify the benefit enrollment process, by implementing a smooth, efficient enrollment system while providing full education and communication of the employee’s benefit package. EBC became an additional resource to the HR team.
• By utilizing Face-to-Face, Telephonic and Self-Service, EBC was able to meet the client's needs of collecting, assisting, and transmitting the employee’s elections directly to the insurance carriers.
• EBC did all of the heavy lifting so the HR team was able to handle more HR tasks and less benefit-related tasks.
• EBC also introduced voluntary benefits to the entire workforce via the new enrollment system. These benefits allow the employees to offset some of their out-of-pocket expenses and help them pay for things like deductibles and co-insurance. 
• New hire employees are fully entered and enrolled by the EBC team.  

Implementation

• Contracts signed on Sept. 15 and enrollment went live Nov. 11 to use enrollment system.
• Meetings began in May to communicate that there would be major changes in the way open enrollment was handled. 
• EBC built customized benefit booklets to be distributed to every employee.
• The call center was open from 8:30am to 7:00pm weekdays to facilitate all shifts. 
• EBC had enrollers on site for two weeks during open enrollment to assist with face-to-face meetings.  

Results

• The employees received the personal touch that needed to communicate a major change in their benefit package. 
• The automated enrollment process by EBC is the front line to all benefit-related questions so the client was able to reallocate many of their HR resources from benefit-related activities to more productive HR activities.   
• Having one location for all benefit elections streamlined where HR goes to answer benefit questions.
• Emailed every employee a benefit confirmation. 
• EBC introduced a new concept of medical plan with financial rules & IRS impacts.