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Administrator Guide
Last Updated: 2024-03-08
Steps: Manage Open Enrollment

Steps: Manage Open Enrollment

You can start open enrollment and then use the
Open Enrollment Status Report
 and the
Active and Completed Open Enrollment Status Report
 to:
  • Add or remove employees to or from open enrollment.
  • Send open enrollment reminders to employees.
  • Extend, cancel, close, schedule to close, finalize, or rescind open enrollment.
  1. (Optional) Determine if your event is large enough that you need to work with the Workday Production Readiness team.
    See Workday Community: Best Practices for Large Customer Events for guidelines about opening a Production Readiness case.
  2. You can initiate open enrollment immediately, or schedule an initiation date.
  3. Enter employee benefit elections.
    Workday sends a notification to the role assigned to the
    Change Benefits for Open Enrollment
     business process. A Benefit Administrator or Partner can also use the
    Open Enrollment Status Report
     to enter employee elections.
  4. If an employee becomes eligible for open enrollment after it has started, you can still add the employee to open enrollment. You can add the employee after open enrollment has closed.
  5. If an employee ceases to be eligible for an open enrollment event after it has started, you can remove that employee from open enrollment.
  6. When you initiate open enrollment, Workday automatically sends notifications to all employees. During open enrollment, you can send notifications to either:
    • All participating employees
    • Employees with specific open enrollment status.
  7. (Optional) Extend open enrollment.
    As long as open enrollment hasn't closed, you can change the end date to be later than originally set.
    Access the
    Open Enrollment Status Report
    , click
    View Details
     for the event, select
    Open Enrollment
    Extend Open Enrollment
     as a related action, and set the
    End
     date.
  8. (Optional) Cancel open enrollment.
    If you created an open enrollment event in error, you can cancel it.
    1. Access the
      Open Enrollment Status Report
      .
    2. Click
      View Details
       for the event.
    3. From the related actions menu for
      View Details
      , select
      Open Enrollment
      Cancel Open Enrollment
      .
  9. Even though you specify a closing date for open enrollment, you must manually close open enrollment or close it by scheduling a closing date.
    If you close your open enrollment on a Friday, Workday strongly recommends that you inform your employees that Workday is unavailable on Friday evenings for weekly updates. See the Workday Community: Event Calendar for details of scheduled outages.
  10. You can enforce default benefit elections for employees who haven't submitted their benefit elections by the close of open enrollment.
  11. You can reopen an individual employee's open enrollment event after it's in the Closed or Finalized status.
  12. (Optional) Rescind an open enrollment event for an individual employee.
    Access the employee's Workday profile. From the related actions menu, select
    Benefits
    Benefits Election History
    .
    Locate the correct open enrollment event. From the related actions menu in the
    Event
     column, select
    Busines Process
    Rescind
    .
  13. (Optional) Rescind open enrollment.
    If you created an open enrollment in error, you can rescind the entire open enrollment after you’ve finalized it.
    This action rescinds the enrollment event for all employees in the open enrollment. You can't reverse this action.
    To rescind the entire open enrollment event, access the
    Active and Completed Open Enrollment Status
     report. Click
    View Details
     for the event. From the related actions menu, select
    Open Enrollment
    Rescind Open Enrollment
    .
  14. You can change an employee's benefit elections when open enrollment is:
    • Open
    • Closed
    • Finalized
    Don't edit employee elections after you've sent their election information to the benefit providers or third-party payroll vendors.