When Do I Use Add Rules?

You define add rules for personnel actions that cause an employee to become eligible for a benefit plan. An employee becomes eligible for a plan if:

  • The employee is added to an employee group used to qualify an employee for the plan

  • The employee's benefit postal code changes to match one in the plan's postal code table

Add rules are useful when you want specific entry rules for situations other than an employee's initial enrollment. For example:

  • Hire Actions for New Employees: If you update benefits, you need to have an add rule for the new hire.

  • Re-hires: A waiting period you apply to new hires can be reduced or waived for employees being rehired. You can define an add rule that is used with a Rehire personnel action to establish rules separate from the plans main Entry rules.

  • Return from Leave: If benefits are stopped when an employee goes on certain type of unpaid leave (other than medical leave), they may need to be re-added when the employee returns to active employment status. Add rules can be used to automatically reinstate the enrollment if a personnel action is used to change the employee's status upon their return.

  • Different Plans for Different Groups: If you have separate plans for different groups of employees (Executive vs. Regular staff; Union vs. Non-Union), an add rule may be used to add the new benefit when an employee moves between the groups, an example is a promotion to an executive position that qualifies an employee for a plan open only to executives.

Example

Maxco Oil Corporation has different rules for all health coverage on employees that are rehired within a year of termination and employees that are rehired after a year. Employees who are re-hired within a year have no waiting period and can have coverage as of the first of the next month after their adjusted hire date. Employees rehired after a year can have coverage the first of the month after waiting 60 days from their adjusted hired date.

Maxco Oil does employee maintenance through personnel actions. They have defined two different rehire personnel actions. One called REHIRE-YR for less than a year and one called REHIRE for greater than a year. Each personnel action is associated with an add rule defining the appropriate waiting period.