Setup Considerations: Open Enrollment
You can use this topic to help you make decisions when planning your configuration and use of open enrollment. It explains:
- Why to set it up.
- How it fits into the rest of Workday.
- Downstream impacts and cross-product interactions.
- Security requirements and business process configurations.
- Questions and limitations to consider before implementation.
Refer to detailed task instructions for full configuration details.
What It Is
The open enrollment workflow enables your workers to elect their benefits during the open enrollment period. Workers can make their elections from the Workday Mobile app or the Workday browser application.
Business Benefits
With Workday Benefits open enrollment, your workers can efficiently enroll in benefit plans during the annual enrollment window.
Use Cases
Use Case | Role |
|---|---|
Configure annual open enrollment. | Benefits Administrator |
Configure midyear open enrollment (Example: 07/01 - 6/30). | Benefits Administrator |
Review benefit groups and update for the upcoming year. | Benefits Administrator |
Configure provider updates and map old provider plans to new plans. | Benefits Administrator |
Create or update rates for plans. | Benefits Administrator |
Create or update cross-plan rules for new plans. | Benefits Administrator |
Configure HSA and FSA enrollment. | Benefits Administrator |
Configure autoenrollment of new plans. | Benefits Administrator |
Create or maintain integrations with providers. | Benefits Administrator |
Questions to Consider
Feature
| Question
| Considerations
|
Plan Year Definition | Have you created a new plan year definition? | If you’ve created new plans for the upcoming plan year, include them in the new plan year or a rolling plan year definition. Use the Create Benefit Plan Year Definitions task.
Changing the dates of an existing plan year definition can impact your employees’ current benefit enrollments. |
Do you have benefit plans you aren't offering in the upcoming plan year? | Include only the plans that you’re offering in the new plan year definition. Don't remove plans from an existing plan year definition. You can use the Do Not Use check box in the Edit Benefit Plan task to hide plans you're not offering from the Benefit Plan prompt. | |
Enrollment Instructions | Do you need to create or update your enrollment instructions? | You can configure open enrollment instructions using the Maintain Enrollment Instructions task. See Set Up Benefit Enrollment Instructions.Workers see configured enrollment instructions on the pages where they select a plan and where they select coverage tiers and amounts. |
Enrollment Configuration | Do you need to create or update your open enrollment event type? | Ensure that you include all coverage types that you’re offering in the new plan year. See Manage Benefit Coverage Types. Include any new coverage types and those types that you continue to offer from the previous plan year. |
Do you want to provide coverage details about each benefit plan? | You can configure the Expanded Plan Details section of the Edit Benefit Plan task. | |
Are you planning to move to a new provider for any of your benefit plans? | Map old plans that you're no longer offering to the new plans. Mapping prevents Workday from waiving coverage. Use the Benefit Plan Mapping tab on Edit Benefit Group task. | |
Have your rates changed? | Update the new rates using an effective date of when the rate change takes effect. Example: The first date of the new plan year.
| |
Do you need to hide the Tobacco Use question for dependents by country? | Update localization settings for the Tobacco Use (Dependent) field. See Maintain Localization Settings. | |
Do you need to update electronic signatures? | You can create a unique electronic signature for each new coverage type. | |
Do you need to define default benefit elections? | Typically, you need benefit elections if you require coverage for a specific type, when employees become eligible. Set up default benefit elections in the Maintain Benefit Defaults task. See Set Up Default Benefits Coverage.You can set priority coverage on the enrollment event rule for default benefits. Use the Coverage Rules tab of the Edit Enrollment Event Rule task. See Create Enrollment Event Rules. | |
Do you need to update dependencies across plans? | If you set up new plans, update the cross-plan rules using the effective date for when the new plans take effect. Use these tasks: | |
Do you have derived or nonderived coverage targets? | If you’re switching from a nonderived coverage target to a derived coverage target, consider adding additional instructions for workers to select their dependents before selecting plans. See Set Up Benefit Enrollment Instructions.
Adding these instructions can prevent an employee's coverage from accidentally changing to employee-only because they didn't select any dependents. | |
What are the latest IRS HSA and FSA limits? | Add limits to your plans. If the IRS has changed the HSA and FSA limits, update your existing plan with the new limits. See Create Health Savings Account Plans and Create Spending Account Plans.
Review deduction codes with Payroll to that make sure the HSA and FSA limits are correct, so deductions stop at the limit. | |
Pay Period Schedules | Are you offering flexible spending or health savings accounts? | Verify the setup of your pay period schedule for the new benefit year to ensure that the FSA and HSA plans calculate deductions correctly.
To set up your pay period schedule, contact your payroll administrator. |
Analytics | Do you want to add embedded analytics? | You can embed custom reports as step-related worklets in the open enrollment process so that you can provide relevant report information to your workers during enrollment.
You can add worklets from the related actions menu of the Change Benefits for Open Enrollment business process. |
Launching Open Enrollment | How do you want your employees to enter the open enrollment workflow? | With the Configure Announcements task, you can create an open enrollment announcement on their Home page. See Add Home and Dashboard Announcements.Workers can enter the open enrollment flow directly from the task in My Tasks or from the announcement. |
Integrations | Do you need to create new or update existing integrations for the upcoming year? | For new integrations, check the Cloud Connect for Benefits catalog for an existing integration for the provider.
Plan carefully and give yourself plenty of time to set up and test the integration with the provider. |
Recommendations
Consideration | Recommendations |
|---|---|
Enrollment Instructions | Create or update open enrollment instructions using the Maintain Enrollment Instructions task.
|
Testing | Give yourself enough time to test your open enrollment configuration thoroughly in a nonproduction environment. Test all areas thoroughly before moving the changes to a production tenant, including:
Consider moving your tested configuration from the nonproduction tenant to your production tenant a few weeks before initiating open enrollment. This period gives you time to refresh the nonproduction tenant with the changes you made to the production setup. You can then test those changes before initiating open enrollment for all workers. |
Requirements
Review the Workday Community: Open Enrollment Checklist. The checklist helps you verify that you have made all new and updated changes. It can help with your questions before you begin setup.
Verify that you have access to configure all external URLs that you require during open enrollment.
Limitations
Avoid making any benefit configuration changes after you initiate open enrollment. Most changes won't take effect, however, additionally, some might cause errors that prevent workers from enrolling. If you need to correct your benefit configuration after you initiate open enrollment, you might need to cancel and reinitiate open enrollment.
Tenant Setup
In the
Edit Tenant Setup - HCM
task, you can:- Select theEnable Mobile Benefitscheck box to enable the open enrollment on the Workday Benefits mobile app.
- Select theDisable Emergency Contact, Dependent, and Beneficiary Linkingcheck box.Selecting this check box prevents changes to a linked relationship from overriding beneficiaries or dependents when the person has more than 1 role.
Security
Domains
| Considerations
|
Set Up: Tenant Setup - HCM in the Systems functional area. | Enables the administrator to enable or disable benefit configuration options in the Edit Tenant Setup - HCM task, including enabling enrollment events on the Workday mobile app. |
Set Up: Benefits in the Benefits (Systems) functional area. | Enables the administrator to access open enrollment setup tasks. |
Worker Data: Benefit Eligibility in the Benefits and Personal Data functional areas. | Enables the administrator to access the Benefits Eligibility by Worker report. |
Worker Data: Benefits in the Benefits and Personal Data functional areas. | Enables the administrator to manage worker's benefit elections, including access to the Benefits tab on the worker profile. |
Worker Data: Insurance Calculated Coverage in the Core Compensation functional area. | Gives the administrator access to the Calculated Coverage report field. Administrators can view individual worker's calculated coverage amounts for the plans they enroll in. |
Self Service: Benefits in the Benefits functional area. | Enables employees to complete benefit elections |
Business Processes
Configure the
Change Benefits for Open Enrollment
business process for the open enrollment work flow. You can add worklets for embedded analytics to business process steps, providing links to additional information.
Ensure that you set up the worklets on this business process when using the redesigned Open Enrollment workflow. (Previously, you could set the worklets up on the Change Benefits for Life Event business process only.)
Reporting
Workday delivers these reports to help you prepare for and manage open enrollment:
Report | Description |
|---|---|
Active and Completed Open Enrollment Status Report
| Use this report to view and manage the status of active and completed enrollment election events. This report provides more detail than the Open Enrollment Status Report , but can take a long time to run. Workday recommends that you limit your use to managing enrollment elections after finalizing open enrollment events. |
Benefit Corrections in Progress Audit
| Use this report to view a list of benefit corrections that you've started, but not yet submitted. |
Benefits Eligibility by Benefit Group
| Use this report to view future-dated benefits groups. Run for each benefit group using the open enrollment event date. Compare the reports to ensure that no workers exist in more than 1 group. |
Benefit Events Status Report
| Use this report to view workers with benefit events and the status of those events. |
Finalize Open Benefit Events
| Use this task to clean up all outdated enrollment events. |
Manage Evidence of Insurability Status
| Use this task to clean up all outdated EOI requests. |
Open Enrollment Status Report
| Use this report before finalizing enrollment to view:
Active and Completed Open Enrollment Status Report . |
Terminated Employees Eligible for Benefits
| Use this report to view the terminated employees that can still receive benefits. |
View Benefit Eligibility Rule Results
| Use this report to troubleshoot to see why someone is or isn't meeting an eligibility rule. |
View Workers in Multiple Benefit Groups Audit
| Use this job to view workers eligible for more than 1 benefit group so that you can troubleshoot this issue. Don't use for future-dated benefit groups. |
Workers for Benefit Group by Most Recent Benefit Event
| Use this RDS to create a custom report that audits benefit enrollment data. |
Workers no Longer Eligible for Open Enrollment
| View workers who aren’t eligible for benefits but currently have an open enrollment event. |
Integrations
Before you set up a new benefit plan, consider if your plan will require an integration between Workday and the benefits provider. Careful planning is essential during open enrollment to ensure proper configuration and testing of benefit provider integrations. See Concept: Open Enrollment Integration Checklist.
Give yourself a lot of lead time for testing a new integration.
When using a new benefit provider, first check the Cloud Connect for Benefits catalog. The new provider might be in the network.
Ensure that you understand the time line and responsibilities, which can vary based on whether:
- The provider is already in the network.
- The provider is new to the Cloud Connect for Benefits catalog.
Don’t change the name of an existing benefit plan or provider when creating new plans or providers. These changes impact current integrations and benefit enrollment history.
Ask your providers whether they’ve changed any benefit plan codes for the new plan year. You need to update your integration maps with any changes.
When you offer a new benefit plan with the same provider, link the plan to your existing integration. Likewise, if you discontinue a plan, remove the integration link.
Include payroll balances. Actual contribution amounts are only available to Cloud Connect for Benefits integrations from Workday Payroll. If you use a third-party payroll provider, benefit integrations send estimated amounts based on the benefit plan setup.
Maintain benefit provider integration maps to specify how values in Workday map to values in an external endpoint.
Connections and Touchpoints
Benefits open enrollment interacts with Payroll for plan-related deductions.
Workday offers a Touchpoints Kit with resources to help you understand configuration relationships in your tenant. Learn more about the Workday Touchpoints Kit on Workday Community.