Employee Navigator Software Enhancements for COVID-19

Employee Navigator is continuing to enhance our software in response to COVID-19 changes. Here are some features we added:

New enrollment effective dates available for Special COVID-19 Enrollment life event

The Special COVID-19 Enrollment event has been enhanced to allow for new effective dates. When this feature was originally released, the effective date of change was hard coded to 4/1/20 for both the employee and the dependent event. As the current situation evolves, carriers are opening up addition special enrollment opportunities.
From each Life Event > select Edit to find a new drop down labeled "Enrollment Effective Date". Use this setting to change the default effective date of change from 4/1/20 to either 5/1, 6/1, or 7/1. Only 1 date can be selected at a time.
Note: Changing the enrollment effective date does not change any pending enrollments that were made with the previous enrollment date.

Added optional Class filters to "CARES Act Insurance Costs" report

The CARES Act Insurance Costs report has been enhanced to include the option to filter by employee classifications: Class, Department, Business Unit, Division, and Office. Please note that if an HR User has access controls set to limit their visibility into specific employee classifications, COVID-19 reports will be hidden from their access.

New "CARES Act Total Employee Count" report

A new "CARES Act Total Employee Count" report has been added to help companies determine if they can apply for certain CARES Act loan programs. This report can be found on the company level in Reports>CARES Act Total Employee Count. This report can be run for the entire company, or it can be broken out by Business Unit. Please note that if the report is broken out by Business Unit, the total employee count will reflect an employee's current Business Unit. Mid-year Business Unit changes on an employee record are not accounted for in this report. 

Furlough Leave status added to the Terminations and Company Terminations reports

Furloughed employees will now reflect in the agency level "Terminations" and "Company Terminations" reports. Employees that have the Leave status = Furlough will appear on these reports when the employee's Furlough start date falls into the specified date range.

Updates to Leave Status 

Our Leave status field has been upgraded! Leave status records are now housed in an employee's Profile>Leave Status. Previously, Leave status records were added in an employee's Employment tab. This change was made so that multiple Leave status records can be entered for an employee. An employee's Leave status, Leave start date, and Leave end date are now importable fields and change tracking and events will now trigger for Leave status changes. For more information on Leave status management, check out our Leave Status Management article. 

Updates to benefit recalculation for Integrated Payroll

An update was made to properly recalculate benefits when a future salary change is added to an employee's record from an integrated payroll partner. Previously, when a future salary was received from payroll, benefits were not being recalculated as expected using the employee's new salary. 

"Reinstate" label change and update to Employee Management page for terminated employees 

In an effort to make termination actions more clear, the "Reinstate" tool has been relabeled "Undo Termination" and a new "Termination Actions" section has been created on the Employee Management page for terminated employees. 
Undo Termination tool (formerly "Reinstate"): When an employee has been terminated, users have the option to "Undo Termination." No logic changes have been made to Undo Termination tool. Undo Termination should be used if the employee was terminated in error. Undo Termination will unset the employee's termination and plan enrollment end dates (if any) so that coverage is reinstated back to the employee's original hire and start date. Undo Termination will also remove the COBRA event that was set on employees record when termination was entered.  For more information on the difference between Rehiring an employee and Undo Termination, see this article for more details: Rehire or Undo Termination for a Terminated Employee
Termination Actions: When an employee is terminated, a new actions section will appear on their Employee Management page. This section will only appear when an employee is terminated. It contains the following tools:  
  • Rehire 
  • Undo Termination 
  • Terminate Editor 
These tools are only applicable to terminated employees so they will not be displayed when an employee's record is active. The functionality of the tools in the Termination Actions section remains the same. 

Daycare and Transit Election Changes

HR users are now able to process retro adjustments or drop. Go to update benefits on the employees home page and select Adjust / Drop  Daycare, Adjust / Drop Parking or Adjust / Drop Transit 
It is also now possible to adjust the contribution to $0. A request for an adjustment to $0 can only be made if the employee has a current benefit. If they do not, they are required to enter an amount greater than the plans minimum requirement. 

New "CARES Act Insurance Cost" report

A report detailing employer contributions to health insurance is now available.  This information will be needed as part of the SBA’s loan application as well as the forgiveness request.  This new report details the Employee and Employer costs on a monthly basis.
This new report named the CARES Act that can be found on the Company Reports > Benefit Reporting > Cares Act. This report functions like our W-2 Summary report but allows the user to select their own range to gather data from.

Employee Navigator populates this report based on if the employee was enrolled on or after the 15th of each month and adds that to their cost. Carrier wash rules can also be applied at the plan -> Advanced -> Billing Wash Rules for more accuracy. This report can be downloaded into Excel and summed.
Any employee not eligible or not enrolled in coverage will display $0. 

Company Terminations Report 

In light of the current economic activity resulting in staffing changes, a new cross-company report was added to provide brokers visibility into the termination and hiring activity occurring within their groups. The Company Terminations report can be accessed on the broker reports page (Broker > Reports > Utilization Reports > Company Terminations).
  • This reports counts the # of employees whose termination or hire was 'entered in EN' and the # of employees whose termination or hire dates are within the specified date range. If there is no activity, the company will not appear. 
  • This report is accessible only to the Premier Users for each broker and to GA users. 
Added the following fields to the row-based and column-based ad hoc reports:
  • Leave status
  • Leave start date
  • Leave end date
When reporting on Leave status field, the current Leave status data that exists for an employee in the Employee Profile Employment will populate.

Improve user interface for Termination reason

Headers were added to the termination reason list on the terminate employee tool (Employee > select Terminate Employment > select Termination Reason). Reasons that will trigger COBRA are listed under header "COBRA Qualifying Events" and reasons that will not trigger COBRA are listed under header "NON-COBRA Qualifying Events"

Broker Insights:  Reporting for terms with integrations  

In light of the current economic activity resulting in an increased amount of staffing changes, a new report was added to provide Carrier Vendors visibility into the termination and hiring activity occurring within all companies integrated with the vendor. The Company Terminations Report can be accessed on the vendor portal (Vendor > Reports Company Terminations Report).
  • This reports counts the # of employees whose termination or hire was 'entered in EN' and the # of employees whose termination or hire dates are within the specified date range. If there is no activity, the company will not appear. 
  • This report is accessible to Carrier Vendor users with the "Vendor Executive" role selected on their user profile, which is a role that can only be assigned by Employee Navigator.

Enhanced leave status to include “Furloughed” & added Start and end dates

Added a new Leave status of "Furlough" in Employee Profile Employment. This status will be used to identify that an employee is on leave because they have been furloughed.
NOTE: An update will be released shortly to add the ability to import and report on Leave status, Leave start date, and Leave end date.

Special Enrollment Life Events

Added TWO new Life Events which will allow employees and/or dependents who previously waived coverage to opt in for a limited time. These events are in response to the Special COVID-19 Enrollment Opportunity some carriers were putting in place for April 1, 2020.
  • Employee Add > Special COVID-19 Enrollment - once employee visible, this event will only be available if an employee is not currently enrolled in a medical plan
  • Dependent Add > Special COVID-19 Enrollment - once employee visible, this event will be displayed for any eligible employee, but like any dependent add life event, if the employee does not have eligible dependents, they will not be able to enroll them.
  • For carriers offering this special enrollment or for more information on using the events, check out our article: Special COVID-19 Enrollment Opportunity
NOTE: At this time, the events are hard coded to show only Medical plans and to enforce a 4/1/2020 effective date of coverage change. New life events will always show for admin users, but will only show for employees after they have been enabled.
Added a new Leave status of "Furlough" in Employee Profile Employment. This status will be used to identify that an employee is on leave because they have been furloughed.
NOTE: An update will be released shortly to add the ability to import and report on Leave status, Leave start date, and Leave end date.

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