National retailer offering the fashion merchandise, service and presentation of a better department or specialty store.

Company Snapshot

With three distinct types of employees, this organization leverages a technology-enabled approach to meet people’s diverse needs and provide robust service.

300 stores in 31 states

11,000 benefits-eligible employees corporate, full-time, part-time

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CHALLENGE

With a workforce dispersed across the United States among retail locations, distribution centers and corporate headquarters, the company has three distinctly different types of employees that it’s committed to offering a high level of support and benefit offerings.

The workforce is diverse and spread out across the country working different shifts, hours, and many locations. Employees working in distribution centers and store locations don’t have as much access to or initial comfort with technology, as current enrollment processes were on paper with manual administration. Corporate team members tend to be using a computer all or part of the day. While all part of the same overall team, each of these groups had different needs for employee communication, engagement, benefits delivery and administration.

The current systems in place were not capable of automation related to overall benefit communication and delivery and required much of HR and Benefit staff’s time in managing and updating manual processes especially during open enrollment.

Constrained staff and resources for support of benefits communication, engagement, and overall management of benefits offerings.

SOLUTION

This organization recognized and embraced the differences and unique needs of its diverse employees. As a national employer, the organization wants to deliver a high level of service and robust benefit offerings to all employees. To address the various groups, the organization leverages the functionality within the MyWorkplace platform and partners with a benefits education and enrollment firm.

For retail location and distribution center employees, all interaction was electronic and primarily benefit counselor assisted with a focus on promoting and learning to use the platform for enrollment and benefits management. This also included the use of the dependent verification functionality for updating all dependent information for HR approval. The benefits communications and new branding effort was part of the open enrollment initiatives for employees to go to one place for all benefit related information.

Corporate employees receive system-generated communications with a focus on the online benefits enrollment and administration functionality. Typically, the corporate employees are more self-serving and technical savvy, but did have the option to utilize a benefit counselor on site or in the call center as needed.

Automation of all processes from enrollment, administration, through carrier and payroll files was designed and implemented as part of the overall initiatives.

RESULTS

Utilizing the flexibility of the MyWorkplace platform and solution, this organization successfully supports three very different employee groups with varying benefits and needs. The core system is configured to display employee-specific options and resources based on their employee class, and it offers access to all benefit communications, employee changes, online or through member services options. All employees were able to update dependent verification information electronically, and the process is no longer manual and cumbersome for the HR and Benefits staff.

Utilizing the flexibility and automation of the MyWorkplace platform coupled with the benefits education, engagement, and enrollment services assisted this organization in meeting and exceeding their goals and service objectives to their diverse employee workforce. Open enrollment alone achieved 97% active engagement with the employees.