What are Benefit Dates?

You can use various dates to determine when an employee can enroll in a plan. Waiting periods and enrollment requirements on benefits plans can be based on the following employee dates.

  • Hire

  • Adjusted hire

  • Anniversary

  • Seniority

  • Five user-defined benefit dates

Example

River Bend Hospital uses the hire date field on Employee to store the original hire date of the employee. The adjusted hire date is used in a re-hire situation as the date the employee is re-hired at River Bend. The seniority date is a date calculated to reflect the employee's combined time of service.

The eligibility date for the 401(k) plan at River Bend for a new hire is calculated from the employee's hire date. If an employee leaves River Bend and is subsequently re-hired, the adjusted hire date is used to calculate the waiting period for that re-hired employee in the 401(k) plan. The seniority date is used to calculate years of service for determining the company match.