Managing Benefit Classes: Deciding Which Employees Get Which Benefits

Purpose

A benefit class is a group of employees who are offered the same benefits on the same terms. Typical classes are full-time versus part-time, salaried versus hourly, or one class per work location. Your broker's proposal then decides, class by class, which plans are offered, how much the company contributes, and how long a new hire waits before coverage starts. So the class an employee is in decides what they see when they enroll.

Classes are yours to manage. This article covers how classes work, how to create, edit, and remove them, how employees are placed in a class, and what happens to an employee's benefits when their class changes.

When to use this

• Before a new plan year, when your offering will differ between groups of employees (for example, part-time staff get dental and vision but not medical). Set up the classes first, then tell your broker, who builds the proposal around them.
• When your workforce changes shape: a new location, a new union group, a new employment type.
• When an employee is in the wrong class and is being offered the wrong plans.

Do not use a class change to fix a plan, a rate, a contribution, or a waiting period. Those live in the proposal and belong to your broker.

Who does what

How classes work

Every employee is always in exactly one class. UZIO creates a Default class for every company. Employees stay in Default until they are moved to another class.

A class can have criteria, or none. A criteria-based class collects employees automatically by a field on their employee record. A class with no criteria holds only the employees you put in it by hand. Criteria are drawn from the employee record, for example:

• Work location, division, or department
• Job title
• Employment type or employment classification (such as union or non-union, exempt or non-exempt)
• Pay type or pay frequency
• Hours worked per week, or annual salary, within a range
• Date of hire, within a range
• A custom field your company has added to the employee census

Explicit beats automatic. When you choose a class for an employee yourself, that choice sticks. When you do not, UZIO places the employee by the class criteria. If only one class exists, new employees go into it automatically.

UZIO does not guess. If an employee matches no class's criteria, or matches more than one, UZIO asks you to choose the class before it saves the employee record.

Profile edits can move an employee. When you edit an employee's record and the change meets a different class's criteria (a new location, a switch from part-time to full-time), UZIO reassigns the class and tells you so when you save.

Create a class

1. Go to Benefits > Manage Benefits Classes.
2. Click Create New Class.
3. Enter a Class Name and a Class Description. Use a name an employee would recognise, such as Full-Time Salaried.
4. To make the class criteria-based, choose a Class Criteria category, then select the value that defines the class (for example, Work Location = Denver). Leave criteria empty for a class you will fill by hand.
5. Click Create Class.

UZIO places matching employees in the new class. Employees whose placement would now be ambiguous stay where they are, and you are asked to resolve them.

To use a custom field as a criterion, the field must first exist on your employee census and at least one employee must have a value in it. Until then it does not appear in the criteria list. See Managing Employer Custom Fields.

Edit, rename, or remove a class

From Benefits > Manage Benefits Classes, open the class to change its name, description, or criteria, then click Update Class. The Default class can be renamed to something more meaningful.

UZIO blocks editing or deleting a class while employees are still assigned to it, or while the class is used in an active benefits proposal. To retire a class:

1. Move its employees to their new class first (edit each employee's class, or change the criteria that place them).
2. Ask your broker whether the class is still used in a current or upcoming proposal.
3. Once the class is empty and unused, delete it.

When an employee's class changes

Changing an employee's class in the census does not, by itself, rewrite the benefits they already elected. Their enrollment still reflects the old class until a Class Change event is reported.

1. Find who needs attention. The Class Reconciliation Report lists employees whose class on their employee record differs from the class they are enrolled under. UZIO runs it weekly where it applies to your account. See Running and Scheduling Standard Reports.
2. Report a Class Change event for each of them. Class Change is an employer-only event: employees never see it in their own portal. Follow Reporting a Life Status Change on an Employee's Behalf and choose Class Change.
3. Complete the new elections, on the employee's behalf or by leaving them for the employee to finish.

How a Class Change behaves under UZIO's standard settings:

Other things to know:

• Newly eligible benefits may carry a waiting period. If the new class makes the employee eligible for a benefit for the first time, your broker can apply a waiting period to it when the event is reported, following the carrier's rules.
• Moving to a class with no benefits ends coverage. When an employee moves to a class that is not eligible for a benefit, UZIO ends that coverage promptly rather than waiting for the next open enrollment.
• Payroll follows. If you run payroll in UZIO, the employee's benefit deductions and your contributions are replaced for the affected dates once the Class Change enrollment is submitted.
• Two plan years at once. While a current and an upcoming proposal are both active, the employee's class must exist in each proposal that applies to them. If it does not, UZIO blocks the change until you choose a class that does.

Common problems

Why does UZIO ask me to pick a class when I add an employee? Your company has more than one class, and the employee's details either match none of the criteria or match more than one class. Pick the class the employee belongs in. Your choice is kept even if their details change later.

Why can't I edit or delete this class? Employees are still assigned to it, or it is part of an active benefits proposal. Move the employees to another class first, and ask your broker whether the class is used in a current or upcoming proposal.

I moved an employee to a new class, but they still see their old plans. Their enrollment has not been updated yet. Report a Class Change event for them, as described above. If they have not enrolled at all for the plan year, ask your broker whether their enrollment needs to be reset so they are offered the new class's plans.

Employees in my new class are not offered any benefits. The broker's proposal does not include the class yet. Ask your broker to add the class to the proposal and decide what it is offered.

My custom field does not appear in the criteria list. No employee has a value in that field yet. Add the value to at least one employee's record, then try again.

Still stuck?

Questions about which plans or contributions a class receives belong with your broker. Contact UZIO Support when the platform itself fails: a class will not save, an employee's class will not change even though they are not in an active enrollment, or the Class Reconciliation Report is missing when you have employees in more than one class. Please reach out to us at support@uzio.com or call +1-571-601-1752. Include the class name, the employee's name or ID if one is involved, the screen you were on, the exact message you saw, and when it started.

Related articles

• Viewing Your Benefit Proposals
• Reporting a Life Status Change on an Employee's Behalf
• Tracking Open Enrollment and Completing an Enrollment for an Employee
• Running and Scheduling Standard Reports
• Employee experience: Enrolling in Benefits