Namely Toolkit: Open Enrollment

This toolkit is your one-stop-shop for everything related to Open Enrollment in Namely! 

 

 

Welcome to the Namely Open Enrollment Toolkit!

If you're a client with our core offering, this toolkit will walk you through each step of open enrollment configuration. Learn how to update your plans and carrier feeds, administer open enrollment, approve plans, audit your site and data, and resolve any errors you may come across. 

If you're a managed benefits client, we'll handle your open enrollment! Please reach out to your benefits consultant for next steps.  

Read on to get started! 

 

GETTING STARTED 

Open enrollment is the yearly period during which your employees can enroll or make changes to their benefits options, such as health, dental, and life insurance. This is often referred to as the “renewal” period with your carriers. 

To administer open enrollment for your organization, follow these steps. We'll walk you through in detail as you continue in this toolkit! 

• Confirm your benefits offerings

• Understand your configuration options—including carrier feeds

• Complete pre-configuration tasks

• Configure your open enrollment 

• Test your open enrollment

• Administer your open enrollment

• Additional help

If this is your first time administering an open enrollment—or benefits in general—reading through our New Benefits Admin Guide is a great way to familiarize yourself with everything a benefits administrator needs to know, including open enrollment and beyond. 

As you read through this guide, you'll encounter many common industry and Namely-specific terms about benefits. Our articles on Benefits definitions and Benefits terminology can help define these terms if you have questions. 

And remember—if you’re a managed benefits client, we've got your open enrollment covered! Reach out to your benefits consultant for more information.  

 

Let's begin! 

 

CONFIRM YOUR BENEFITS OFFERINGS  

Before beginning your OE configuration, solidify these important details: 

• Choose your open enrollment dates  

• Finalize your organization's plan documents 

 

CHOOSE YOUR OPEN ENROLLMENT DATES 

Select OE start and end dates that meet your organization's needs. 

• Most companies choose to schedule their open enrollment to end a few weeks before enrollment forms must be submitted to benefit providers. For example, if calendar-year benefit plans begin on January 1, open enrollment will often take place in November. 

• Open enrollment is not required to be a certain length of time. Most employers have an open enrollment period of at least two to four weeks. You'll need to provide your open enrollment start and end dates later when you begin the configuration process. 

 

FINALIZE PLAN DOCUMENTS 

Approximately 120 days before your anticipated open enrollment effective date, Namely will email you a reminder to begin preparing for your open enrollment. We recommend working with your broker to make sure you have all your plan and rate information for the upcoming year.  

If you plan to self-configure, it’s important to have your plan documents finalized a minimum of five weeks prior to your open enrollment start date. If you'll be working with our Project Services team, you'll need these finalized no less than three weeks before launch. 

NOTE: If you would like Namely to configure your open enrollment but don’t have finalized plan details within three weeks of our intended open enrollment period, we can still configure open enrollment for you, but there will be pricing implications for configurations requested with less than three weeks lead time. 

If you have any questions concerning timelines or obtaining your finalized plan details, please submit a case through ClientSpace. 

Once you’ve determined your benefits offerings, you can continue to the next step. 

 

UNDERSTAND YOUR CONFIGURATION OPTIONS

You have two options when configuring your Open Enrollment in Namely:   

• Submitting an Open Enrollment project with Namely’s Project Services team, or  

• Self-Configuration

Certain circumstances may also require that your organization use a combination of these options. Here’s what to consider before you decide:   

 

CHECKLIST

Understand how carrier feeds affect your configuration options. 

Learn about your OE configuration options. 

• Partnering with our Project Services team 

• Self-Configuration 

 

UNDERSTAND CARRIER FEEDS (IF APPLICABLE)

A carrier feed is an automated way to securely transmit employee and dependent demographic data, benefit elections, and payroll contributions to benefit carriers and other third-party administrators. Though optional, carrier feeds save time and reduce the risk associated with manual data entry. Carrier feeds eliminate the administrative burden of manually collecting information, communicating to benefits providers, and handling paperwork. 

It’s important to note that using carrier feeds requires assistance from our Project Services team and incurs a fee—regardless of whether you plan to self-configure your open enrollment or whether you partner with Project Services.  

 

WHAT NAMELY DOES

Since each carrier handles feed setup differently, Namely takes ownership of the setup process and coordinates its moving parts.  

• We’ll work alongside the carrier to test changes and ensure accuracy. 

• We’ll coordinate the delivery of a clean open enrollment file to your carriers. 

• We’ll make sure to communicate where manual processing is required so you’re aware. 

• We’ll recommend when you should finalize employee elections in order to transmit the feed in time for their deadline. That way, there won’t be any coverage issues, and ID cards will be delivered by your renewal date. 

If you don’t plan to use carrier feeds, you can continue to the next section to understand your open enrollment options.  

 

SETTING UP NEW CARRIER FEEDS

If you're interested in setting up any new carrier feeds, we’ll partner with the carriers to check if your company is eligible for a feed based on their requirements.   

NOTE: Namely will try to build a feed with any carrier, but in some cases, carriers may have minimum enrollment requirements or other technical roadblocks that could prevent a connection.  

Time Frame

The time required to build new carrier feeds varies, as requirements can vary in complexity from vendor to vendor. We aim to implement new carrier feeds within 90-120 days of your project submission.   

NOTE: Manual processing will be required while your feed is being built. New feeds may not be implemented by your open enrollment start date, depending on when your project was submitted. 

Pricing

The fee for initiating new carrier feed projects with our Project Services team is $1,600 per carrier feed. 

 

UPDATING EXISTING CARRIER FEEDS 

If you're a SaaS client and have carrier feeds set up, you'll need to work with our Project Services team to make necessary updates to your feeds—even if you decide to set up your open enrollment site on your own. 

NOTE: Even if there are no changes to your existing carrier feeds, you still need to submit an OE Carrier Feed Review & Modification project so our team can coordinate the delivery of your OE elections with your carrier and minimize the potential for discrepancies.  

This request must be submitted at least three weeks before your open enrollment starts.

 

Time Frame

We aim to submit benefit elections by the carrier's deadline for ID card delivery, which is generally 2 weeks before the new plan effective date. File delivery to the carriers is contingent on your OE assessment completion, project submission by the communicated deadline, and on a timely OE finalization. 

Pricing

The price for updating existing carrier feeds varies based on the number of existing feeds. We charge a flat fee of: 

• $1,000 for clients with 1-2 feeds 

• $2,000 for clients with 3-4 feeds 

• $3,000 for clients with 5 or more feeds 

 

IMPORTANT NOTE

If you have carrier feeds, please note: your open enrollment must be configured and finalized before our Project Services team can begin your carrier feed project. Finalization of your open enrollment dashboard is required to initiate your open enrollment file feed to your respective carrier(s). 

Once your open enrollment is finalized, please allow 3-4 business days for your open enrollment file to feed over to your carrier(s). If you choose to extend your open enrollment past the initial intended end date, the extension will delay the transmission of your file feed(s) by 3-4 business days. The extension will also delay the time frame in which carriers create your ID cards. 

For more detailed information on working with our Project Services team on new or existing carrier feeds, see our Open Enrollment Carrier Feed Projects Overview. 

Once you’ve decided whether you plan to use carrier feeds, you may continue to the next step.

 

OPEN ENROLLMENT CONFIGURATION OPTIONS 

 

Namely configures open enrollments for all managed benefits clients. Clients who are not managed benefits can choose to submit an Open Enrollment project to our Project Services team or self-configure. As you’re deciding which configuration option is best for your organization, here are a few things to consider:  

• Time frame: Timely submission of an open enrollment project request is critical to attaining project quality. Open enrollment project requests submitted fewer than three weeks prior to the requested open enrollment start date will be at risk of making the open enrollment date. Late submissions are also subject to rush fees based on the scope and effort required. 

• Pricing: If you decide not to self-configure, Namely can configure your site for a fee. Additional fees may be charged to establish and update associated carrier feeds.  

 

WORKING WITH PROJECT SERVICES

While Namely’s benefits administration tool allows you to self-configure the majority of your benefit plans, we do recommend working with our open enrollment team to make sure all of your plans are configured optimally.   

Configuring Open Enrollment with our Project Services team:

• Only requires three weeks to get open enrollment up and running, including site testing. 

• Provides years of experience interpreting and translating benefit requirements into the correct configuration in the Namely platform. The Namely team will also handle deductions mapping, so that your employees have the correct amounts deducted from their paychecks. 

• Ensures your benefits and enrollment options are optimized to take advantage of all the functionality the Namely platform has to offer. 

Remember: If you use or plan to use carrier feeds, you must partner with our Project Services team. 

 

SELF-CONFIGURATION

You can also self-configure your open enrollment at no additional cost.  

Time frame

Note that if you decide to self-configure your open enrollment, we highly recommend that you begin no less than five weeks prior to your OE start date. This time frame allows you: 

• At least three weeks to complete OE setup 

• An additional two weeks to complete OE testing 

Pricing

You can self-configure your open enrollment at no additional cost.  

However, some benefit plan requirements can get tricky—even if they might not appear so at first glance. They may require a member of our team to architect and configure the solution for you.  If you do attempt to self-configure, and later find that you need Namely to get involved to fix or take over your OE setup, you will be directed to submit an Open Enrollment Configuration Fix Project in the Project Services Catalog.  

NOTE: The cost and submission timeframe for this project are the same as an open enrollment project.  

Next Steps

Namely has compiled several articles to guide you as you self-configure your site. Some of the tasks you’ll be responsible for include:  

Adding coverage lines   Changing coverage settings  Creating new plans   Changing plan settings  Adjusting plan rate types, plan rate eligibility, and EOI settings  Adjusting employer contribution amounts  Uploading plan documents, details, and summaries

Editing, renewing, and ending plans  Entering general OE information   Selecting which employee classes are eligible for OE  Selecting which benefits each employee class is eligible for  Setting your Open Enrollment as Active or Passive   Reviewing and Approving Benefits  Mapping Benefits

If you’d like to self-configure, continue to the next step. 

 

COMPLETE PRE-CONFIGURATION TASKS

All tasks listed in this section are necessary for accurate open enrollment configuration. Make sure that you complete all tasks before moving on to the next step.  

 

SUBMIT YOUR OPEN ENROLLMENT ASSESSMENT

As the final step of choosing your configuration type, complete the Open Enrollment Assessment. Namely will review your answers and advise you on which open enrollment projects to submit to our Project Services team.  

The Open Enrollment Assessment should be completed a minimum of three weeks before the start of your open enrollment—even if you plan on configuring your open enrollment on your own. 

We also recommend completing the assessment before submitting a project. This will help you and your team get a better idea of what type of project you will need and what type of assistance we can provide. 

 

CLEAN UP YOUR BENEFITS ENROLLMENT DATA 

Your benefits administration site will likely be most heavily used during your company's open enrollment. Before you configure your open enrollment, it’s important to address your benefits enrollment data—these tasks will help set you and your team up for open enrollment success: 

• Run an Employee Census Report 

• Audit Employee Demographic Information 

• Perform Confirmation Report Clean-Up 

• Approve Voluntary Life Plans 

• Clear Profile Status Alerts 

 

Running an Employee Census Report

We recommend running an Employee Census Report to check that all employees are in the proper class before open enrollment. Class categorizations will often determine what benefits employees will be eligible for.   

For instructions on how to run this report, see the article Employee Census Report.

To view a step-by-step guide and best practices on how to update an employee's benefits class, see Updating an Employee's Benefits Class.

If you need to make any updates to your company's classes, see Company Class.

Audit Employee Demographic Information 

In addition to making sure your employees are in the proper class, audit your employees’ other demographic information prior to open enrollment. That way, employees will be offered the right plans. 

Instructions on how to run and audit reports on Employee Demographics—as well as links to information on fixing demographic errors—can be found in our guide Preparing Benefits Administration for Open Enrollment.   

 

Confirmation Report Clean-Up 

Anytime an employee begins using Namely’s benefits enrollment wizard throughout the year, the wizard will save their progress. If the employee started using the tool and then abandoned their progress, their abandoned updates may still be in pending or incomplete status at the start of the open enrollment period, causing data confliction.  

To resolve these conflicts, an admin should audit the site for any employee benefit elections that are in pending or incomplete status. Pending elections should be confirmed or rejected, and incomplete enrollments should be submitted for review. 

For complete instructions on how to clean up Confirmation Reports, see our guide to Preparing Benefits Administration for Open Enrollment.

Approve Voluntary Life Plans

If you offer Life or AD&D plans that require employees to complete Evidence of Insurability (EOI), it's best to confirm that any pending volumes above Guaranteed Issue have been approved prior to open enrollment. 

For instructions on how to identify and approve or reject employees with pending EOI volumes, our guide to Preparing Benefits Administration for Open Enrollment.

Clear Profile Status Alerts

If an employee has an incomplete profile in HRIS, they will not be able to enroll in benefits. Check out the Profile Status page to identify employees with incomplete profiles and update their information.  

1. In Namely Payroll, click Reports > Profile Status. 

2. You will be brought to a page that details employee profiles that are missing information.  

For information on required HRIS fields, see our Profile Status Page Checklist. 

Once you’ve finished cleaning up your benefits enrollment data, you can continue to the next step.

 

CONFIGURE YOUR OPEN ENROLLMENT

Based on your review of the configuration options outlined above and the feedback you’ve received from your OE assessment, you are now ready to select the configuration option(s) that are best suited for your organization and your bandwidth as an administrator. 

Again, it’s important to remember that if you use carrier feeds, you must partner with project services and initiate an OE Carrier Feed Review & Modification project to make necessary updates to your feeds—even if you decide to self-configure the rest of your open enrollment site on your own. 

Select the options that best suit your needs for open enrollment configuration below to learn more about next steps. 

 

PARTNER WITH PROJECT SERVICES

Requests received fewer than three weeks prior to the requested open enrollment start date introduce significant risk for meeting your requested open enrollment date. Late submissions are also subject to additional fees based on the scope and effort required.    

 

CHECKLIST

Select your project type(s) a minimum of three weeks prior to your OE start date using the Project Services catalog 

For Open Enrollment Projects, your submission should include: 

• Your Benefits Activation sheet  

• Your contact information 

• Your requested open enrollment start and end dates 

For Carrier Feed Projects, you should also: 

• Wait to approve your OE elections until the end of your election period 

• Finalize your open enrollment by the deadline we communicate to you  

 

SELECT YOUR PROJECT TYPE

To have Namely’s Project Services team configure your open enrollment, navigate to Namely’s Project Services catalog and select the appropriate open enrollment project type(s) from the options below. 

For general instructions on how to use the Project Services Catalog, see Using the Project Services Catalog. 

 

OPEN ENROLLMENT CONFIGURATION PROJECTS

If you submit an open enrollment project, our team will configure new benefits plans and make any necessary updates to existing plans for the new plan year. To initiate this, submit your project using the Project Services Catalog. 

The renewal build takes approximately three weeks to complete. Each open enrollment project consists of the following phases:  

• Namely confirms the requirements 

• Namely configures and tests the build 

• The build is turned over to you for user acceptance testing and validation 

• A walkthrough of the build will be provided 

• Namely completes any updates to the build based on your review and testing 

• Sign off that the build is complete 

Your project submission should include the following necessary information: 

• Attach a fully completed Benefits Activation (BA) sheet for each of your organization's EINs to your open enrollment project request at least three weeks before your open enrollment start date.  

  • This sheet will include your benefit plan selections, coverage details, and negotiated rates for your upcoming plan year. 

  • You can find your Benefits Activation Sheet in your Support Files in HRIS 

  • The BA Sheet will have the following naming convention: 

  • BA_OE_SHEET_clientID_clientName.xlsx  

  • The description will be “Open Enrollment BA Sheet.” 

  • Review the “How to Use This File” tab and work with your broker to make all necessary updates to this workbook to reflect any changes needed for the new plan year. 

  • Your contact information 

  • Your requested open enrollment start and end dates 

Within five business days, a consultant will contact you regarding the information you provided in your Benefits Activation (BA) Sheet and project details.  

NOTE: When selecting your project type from the Project Services Catalog, only select the Open Enrollment Project - Fix project type if you've attempted to build your open enrollment but now need assistance from Namely to complete your configuration and update your plans. 

For detailed instructions on how to submit an open enrollment project, see Submitting an Open Enrollment Project.

 

CARRIER FEED REVIEW AND MODIFICATION PROJECTS

If you’d like to partner with Namely’s Project Services team to handle your carrier feed updates around open enrollment, you have two options for project types: 

OE Carrier Feed Review & Modification

If you select this project type, our team will conduct an impact assessment on your existing carrier feeds and make updates based on changes made for the new plan year. 

Remember, even if there are no changes to your carrier feeds, you still need to submit a project using the Project Services Catalog so our team can coordinate the delivery of your OE elections with your carrier and minimize the potential for discrepancies. 

When partnering with Namely to use carrier feeds, we recommend waiting to approve your OE elections until the end of your election period instead of approving employee benefits as they come in. Most carriers will require you to pause your feed if you confirm elections throughout, which means you'll have to manually process any other benefits changes with your carriers.  

Once your project is started, Namely will communicate an open enrollment finalization deadline to you via email. This deadline is selected with carrier cut off dates in mind. Once you finalize your open enrollment with us within our deadline, we will send your elections to carriers. The carriers will then send ID cards to your company so that you can distribute to your team in a timely manner. 

For detailed instructions on how to submit a Carrier Feed Modification Project, see Submitting an Open Enrollment Carrier Feed Review and Modification Project. 

NOTE: The Carrier Feed - Modification project type should only be used to modify an existing feed based on a mid-year change. 

Carrier Feed - New

If you select this project type, our team will set up a new connection to transmit demographic data, benefit elections, and payroll contributions to benefit carriers and other third-party administrators. 

For more information on new carrier feeds, see Carrier Feeds: Getting Started. 

NOTE: If you have file feeds, finalization of your open enrollment dashboard is required to initiate your open enrollment file feed to your respective carrier(s.) Once your open enrollment is finalized, please allow 3-4 business days for your open enrollment file to feed over to your carrier(s.) If you choose to extend your open enrollment past the initial intended end date, this will delay the transmission of your file feed(s) by 3-4 business days which will also delay the time frame in which carriers create your ID cards. 

 

SELF-CONFIGURE

If you're planning on self-configuring your open enrollment this year, our Plan Setup Assistant is here to help. Once you've confirmed your plans and rates with your broker, these guides will walk you through benefits configuration in Namely, step-by-step. 

Our recommendation for your self-configuration timeline is to begin at least five weeks prior to your open enrollment start date. This will allow you three weeks to configure your open enrollment site, plus an additional two weeks for testing.  

NOTE: If you do attempt to self-configure, then later find you need Namely to get involved to fix or take over the setup, you will be directed to submit an Open Enrollment Configuration Fix project in the Project Services Catalog. The cost for this type of project and the submission time frame are the same as for an open enrollment project.        

 

SELF-CONFIGURATION CHECKLIST

• Review admin access roles and permissions 

• Complete plan setup 

• Learn how to use the open enrollment dashboard 

• Learn how to edit or extend your open enrollment 

 

REVIEW ADMIN ACCESS ROLES AND PERMISSIONS

Before beginning the setup process, make sure the administrator responsible for setting up your open enrollment page has the proper access roles and permissions in Namely. Access to the Plan

Setup Assistant is granted in HRIS. Admin access roles will need the following abilities to use the Plan Setup Assistant successfully:   

• Benefits Setup: Allows users to access the benefits administration portal via the Manage Benefits option. 

• Access Benefits admin: Grants the user access to Manage Benefits on the homepage. The user will also need a role with proper permissions in your Payroll site. 

For more information, see Namely Payroll User Administrative Roles. 

 

PLAN SETUP

Accessing the Benefits Plan Setup Page

If your plan documents and rates are finalized with your broker, you’re ready to head to the Benefits Plan Setup page, where you can view your past, current, and future benefits plans.  

Locate the Plan Setup page by selecting the Manage Benefits tab on their Namely homepage. Here, you can view: 

• Plan name 

• Plan start date 

• When the plan was last updated 

• The plan’s current status 

There are four plan statuses for existing plans:  

• Draft: The plan has been created or is being created but has not been published. Employees can’t see or enroll in this type of plan.

• Active: The plan has been published. Employees can enroll in this type of plan. 

• Renewal: This status shows if you've clicked Renew to make changes to a plan for an upcoming plan year, but you have not yet published the changes.

• Ended: The plan has ended. Employees can no longer enroll in this type of plan. 

   

Using the Plan Setup Assistant

As you navigate the Benefits Plan Setup Page, you should refer to our Plan Setup Assistant User Guides, which will walk you through the setup process for each benefit type, including:  

• Adding coverage lines and changing coverage settings 

• Creating new plans and changing plan settings 

• Adjusting plan rate types, plan rate eligibility, and EOI settings 

• Adjusting employer contribution amounts 

• Uploading plan documents, details, and summaries 

• Editing, renewing, and ending plans 

If there are no changes to any of your plans since the previous year, you can simply renew these plans. 

To access the Plan Setup Assistant User Guides, select the appropriate benefit type below:  

Medical, Dental, Vision	Configuring Opt-in Plans	Disability
Transportation	HSA/FSA User Guide	Life and AD&D

 

Managing Plan Documents

Once a plan has been created and rates have been assigned, you can add any plan documents you want to share with your employees. These documents will be available for comparison in the Enrollment Wizard, and for employee perusal when they click View Benefits from the Namely homepage. 

For more information, see Managing Plan Documents.

Updating Instructions in the Enrollment Wizard

Some verbiage that appears in the Enrollment Wizard can be edited. See our article on Editing Optional Instructions in the Enrollment Wizard to learn how.   

 

USING THE OPEN ENROLLMENT DASHBOARD

Once you’ve set up all of your benefits plans for the upcoming year, you’re ready to access the Open Enrollment Dashboard by navigating to Manage Benefits on the Namely homepage > Open Enrollment

You’ll use the Open Enrollment Dashboard to set up your Open Enrollment configuration, including:  

• Entering general information about your OE, including:  

  • Start and end dates 

  • Effective date 

  • Testing start dates 

• Selecting which employee classes are eligible for OE 

• Selecting which benefits each employee class is eligible for 

• Setting your open enrollment as active or passive  

  • Note: By law, you cannot offer passive enrollment for HSA/FSA accounts. Employees must actively enroll in these plans each year.  

• Reviewing and approving benefits 

• Mapping benefits 

  • Note: If you are offering passive enrollment to your employees, or if your open enrollment contains non-waivable benefits with multiple plan options for a single class, you'll need to complete benefit mapping to tie your currently offered benefits to those being offered for the following plan year.  

  • This process must be completed after you have configured your open enrollment and before finalizing your open enrollment. 

  • Visit Benefit Mapping for Passive Open Enrollment and Non-Waivable Plans to learn how to complete the mapping process. 

For detailed instructions on configuring each of these settings, see Using the Open Enrollment Dashboard. 

 

EDITING OR EXTENDING YOUR OPEN ENROLLMENT

Once your open enrollment has been set up, the dashboard will populate with the open enrollment timeline and employee enrollment status. 

The Open Enrollment Timeline provides a list of important milestones related to the Open Enrollment period and a countdown showing the number of days until your next milestone. It also provides options to edit, pause, or extend your open enrollment. 

• Click Edit Setup in the Open Enrollment Timeline to make any changes to your open enrollment. Any edits to dates will be reflected in the timeline once saved. 

• If for any reason you need to extend your open enrollment period, click Extend. 

• You cannot edit the effective date of the open enrollment once it has started. 

If changes are made to your open enrollment setup that require you to re-map your benefits, this section will resurface under the Next Steps in your open enrollment dashboard to notify you that action is required to fix your mapping. 

Once your open enrollment configuration is complete, you can continue to the next step. 

 

TEST YOUR OPEN ENROLLMENT

After your open enrollment has been configured, we recommend testing it out to be sure everything behaves as expected. The open enrollment dashboard allows you to set an OE test date specifically for this function. 

 

CHECKLIST 

• Test your open enrollment setup with different employees  

• Utilize our Testing Checklists 

 

TEST YOUR SETUP 

We recommend testing your open enrollment with a number of different employees based on your plan setup.  

To test your open enrollment setup:  

1. Go to Manage Payroll > Enrollment Setup > Configuration > Employee List. 

2. Click Enroll next to the employee you would like to test. 

3. Select I had a major life event >  Open Enrollment - TEST! 

   • The Open Enrollment - TEST! option will only populate when you're viewing as an admin and an open enrollment start date, end date, and test date has been entered in the dashboard. 

4. Review the rates and plans to guarantee they are correct. 

5. Click Return to Admin on the confirmation page. 

You may test as many times as you would like with any employee. 

Click Reset to remove any false information and data from the test.    

 

UTILIZE OUR TESTING CHECKLISTS 

Download PDF Here: Testing OE Checklist.pdf  

For additional information, see Testing Your Open Enrollment. 

Once you’ve tested your Open Enrollment, you can continue to the next step.  

 

ADMINISTER YOUR OPEN ENROLLMENT 

Ready for takeoff? Make sure that before your open enrollment begins, you announce all relevant information to your organization and that you understand your responsibilities for managing enrollments.  

 

CHECKLIST 

YOUR OE MANAGEMENT TO-DOS. 

• Launch open enrollment 

• Manage enrollments 

• Finalize open enrollment  

 

LAUNCH OPEN ENROLLMENT TO EMPLOYEES 

Prior to your open enrollment start date, you should let your employees know what to expect.

Our Open Enrollment Kick-Off Kit provides announcement templates you can use to share OE information with your organization. 

We recommend advising your employees to make any benefits changes for current year plans prior to open enrollment, if possible. 

We also have a number of resources you can provide to employees about how they can enroll in benefits during open enrollment included in our article View, Change, or Enroll in Benefits. 

 

MANAGE EMPLOYEE ENROLLMENTS 

Once your Open Enrollment begins, you're responsible for confirming, rejecting, and resetting employee enrollments as needed, as well as addressing other enrollment issues.  

 

CHECKLIST 

• Confirm or reject enrollments 

• Reset enrollments as needed 

• Address other enrollment issues 

• Qualifying life events during OE 

• New hires during OE 

• Evidence of Insurability Processing 

 

CONFIRMING OR REJECTING ENROLLMENTS 

Elections made during open enrollment will need to be approved or rejected from the open enrollment dashboard. To view your pending open enrollment elections: 

 

1. From your Namely homepage, click Manage Benefits > Open Enrollment.

2. Click the Employee Enrollments tab, or click View Enrollments from the Employee Enrollment Status chart, to view and manage your employee's enrollments.  

Here, you’ll have the option to confirm enrollments individually or in bulk. To reject or edit enrollments, you’ll need to complete an individual action. For detailed instructions—including information on how to send individual or bulk reminders to employees who have not submitted their elections—see Using the Open Enrollment Dashboard.

NOTE: If you use carrier feeds, we recommend waiting to approve your OE elections until the end of your election period instead of approving employee benefits as they come in. Most carriers will require you to pause your feed if you confirm elections throughout, which means you'll have to manually process any other benefits changes with your carriers.

 

RESETTING ENROLLMENTS 

Reset Enroll is a function that refreshes an incomplete enrollment session for an employee—i.e. an employee has begun enrolling in benefits using a Qualifying Life Event but has not submitted their changes. 

Namely's Benefits Enrollment Wizard is designed to pick up enrollment sessions where an employee left off. Resetting the employee's enrollment will return them to the beginning of the enrollment wizard.  

For instructions, see Resetting Enrollments Using the Employee List.

 

ADDRESSING OTHER ENROLLMENT-RELATED ISSUES

Qualifying Life Events During OE

Employees temporarily lose the ability to process qualifying life events when your open enrollment is live. The open enrollment life event overrides all other life events outside of your new hire window—it is the only QLE offered to employees until their open enrollment elections have been made and approved by an administrator. 

Once OE is approved, employees can process other benefits changes following a qualifying life event. However, if QLE changes have effective dates prior to the effective date of their OE elections, the employee's OE will override their QLE elections and deductions beginning on the OE effective date. Namely will let both you and your employees know when OE elections may override more recent benefits changes. Learn more about the alerts Namely provides regarding Qualifying Life Events after Open Enrollment. 

You should also ensure the employee maintains their QLE plans and deductions by re-enrolling them in their QLE plans using the same effective date as your OE plans via an Administrator Change. To update OE elections, complete an Administrator Change. 

To learn how, see Managing Qualifying Life Events During Open Enrollment.

New Hires 

Familiarize yourself with the best practices on how to handle new hires during open enrollment with our article on Managing New Hires during Open Enrollment.

Evidence of Insurability Processing

Many Voluntary Life plans require an Evidence of Insurability (EOI) document to be processed for an employee to receive a level of coverage above Guaranteed Issue (GI). To learn more about how to approve or deny coverage levels beyond Guaranteed Issue when an EOI is completed by an employee, see Evidence of Insurability Processing.

 

FINALIZE OPEN ENROLLMENT 

The last step in the open enrollment process is to finalize your OE.  When open enrollment is finalized, any employees who have not submitted their elections will either have their benefits ended, or they will be auto-enrolled, depending on whether you chose an active or passive enrollment. 

 

CHECKLIST

• Finalize open enrollment 

• Conduct a post-open enrollment review 

 

HOW TO FINALIZE 

There are a few steps you'll need to complete in order to confirm employee enrollments and wrap up your organization's OE season. If you receive errors while attempting to finalize your open enrollment, see our article on Open Enrollment Finalization Error Resolution. 

Once open enrollment is finalized, administrators will have to perform an admin change or import if they want to enroll employees again. For more information, see the Administrator Change Process Guide. 

 

CONDUCTING A POST-OPEN ENROLLMENT REVIEW

After open enrollment has ended, we recommend running these reports and auditing election and deduction data to confirm everyone has the proper plans and payroll deductions.  

• Employee Notice Report for Passive Enrollments - This report is available after your open enrollment is finalized. It provides information on employees who were passively enrolled and have enrollment information that requires review.  

• Post-Open Enrollment Election and Deduction Audit - We recommend conducting this audit after open enrollment is completed, and prior to your first payroll run with new enrollments. 

 

ADDITIONAL HELP 

If something goes wrong, we’ve got you covered! Here are solutions to some common open enrollment issues we've seen: 

Submitting an Open Enrollment Configuration Fix: If you have attempted to self-configure, but found that you need Namely to get involved to fix or take over the setup, you’ll can submit an open enrollment configuration fix project in the Project Services Catalog. The cost for this project and submission time frame are the same as an open enrollment project.  

Understanding Error Messages: The enrollment wizard can display errors for a number of reasons, including faulty plan builds, coverage line mapping inconsistencies, data issues, and life events being configured incorrectly. Here is a list of common errors.  

Resolving Discrepancies: While you can resolve some data issues on your own, there are a few that can also be resolved by submitting a case in ClientSpace. Use this comparison chart in our article on Updating your Benefits Data to understand which issues require a case submission. 

Some issues that can be resolved on your own. Administrator changes can come in handy for most corrections to employee enrollment data, including: 

• If an employee made an error when enrolling in plans. 

• If a plan was configured with an incorrect rate, and an employee enrolled and has improper deductions. 

• If dependent enrollments need to be corrected.  

Other Resources

Our Comply Database offers several resources related to employee benefits, including:    

• An Introduction to Employee Benefits - Employee benefits play an increasingly important role in the lives of employees and their families and have a significant financial and administrative impact on a business organization.  

• Group Health Plans - This guide compares the advantages and disadvantages of insured and self-funded plans.  

• Questions About Health Coverage for Domestic Partners - Partners in unmarried relationships – whether called domestic partnerships, civil unions, or other terms – present some challenges for employers that offer group health coverage. Start here to answer the most common questions about domestic partner health coverage. 

Namely HR's Guide to Virtual Open Enrollment & Benefits offers insights on choosing which benefits to offer, all the way through whether to use active or passive enrollment. 

The IRS releases new benefits contribution limits each year. Learn more in our article on IRS Benefits Contribution Limits. 

Our Namely Toolkit: ACA Reporting contains all the information you need to file ACA forms with the IRS in Namely. The toolkit will answer any questions you have around data updates, form access, and error and warning resolution.