Why Use Employee Groups with Benefit Plans?

An employee group is a user-defined group of employees based on specific criteria, or employees grouped manually by employee number.

You can use employee groups in the Benefits Administration application for the following:

• Eligibility criteria for flex plans. For example, only full-time employees are eligible for a flex plan.

• Eligibility criteria for benefit plans. For example, only nonunion employees are eligible for participation in a self-funded short-term disability plan.

• Criteria for the calculation of flex credits. For example, employees in the Midwest receive $1,000 flex credits to purchase benefits while employees on the West Coast receive $1,500.

• Waiting periods. For example, there is a 60-day waiting period for part-time employees and no waiting period for full-time employees.

• Coverage. For example, union employees can choose life insurance coverage at one, two, or three times their salary, while nonunion employees can choose between one to five times their salary in coverage.

• Contributions. For example, contributions are $1,000 for employees in the Midwest and $2,000 for employees on the West Coast.

• General ledger overrides. For example, benefit transactions for executive employees are posted to unique general ledger accounts.

• Benefit automation rules. For example, a full-time employee at ABC Foods switches to part-time, thereby making him ineligible for benefit coverage. The Benefits Administration application stops his benefits based on the automation rules defined for the personnel action that changes him from a full-time to a part-time employee.

You will normally want to include an employee group on the Eligible tab of Benefit Plan (BN15.1). This is considered the main eligible group, and if you are using benefit automation rules, this group is required on the plan. At a minimum, terminated employees are usually not eligible for benefit plans; in this case, you would use an employee group to identify only active employees as being eligible for the plan.

Aside from eligibility, employee groups may be used many places within the Benefits Administration application to define different parts of a given plan uniquely for different groups. If the different parts of the plan, such as coverage or contributions, do not vary by group, you do not need to attach a group to these records. A record defined with no employee group attached will apply to all employees in the main eligible group for the plan. To prevent unnecessary setup and maintenance, it is recommended that you only attach a group when needed.

When varying parts of a benefit plan by employee group, make certain that you define mutually exclusive groups for each of the records, so that only one record will apply to each employee in the plan.

For example, if you define waiting periods for a group of salaried employees and for a group of part time employees, define the employee groups as salaried full-time and salaried part-time. This ensures that an employee will not qualify for more than one waiting period. If more than one waiting period applies to an employee, the Benefits Administration application displays an error message at benefit entry.