I suppose I should be grateful to work for a company that offers benefits at all, but this is way strange.
It's enrollment time for people who work at companies that offer benefits. Where I work, it's the same old drill: If you want to keep the same plans as the prior year, you don't have to do a thing. But if you are making changes, buying vacation days, or wish to put money in a flexible spending plan for 2012, you have to enroll.
On Monday morning, after not having received their packages at home like they were expecting following a heads-up e-mail from HR, employees got an innocuous-looking e-mail in plain text saying it's time to sign up for benefits. The e-mail came from a company no one had ever heard of. There was no reference to our company name and no company logo. There was a link to click on. The e-mail looked like a classic spam or a phishing attempt, so most people just deleted it.
I'm the employee communications person, and thinking it was indeed a phishing scam that I needed to warn people about, I forwarded it to a contact in HR just to be sure. She told me it was legit, from our new benefits administration vendor. It's one thing to get a new vendor that doesn't do things the same way the old one did. But worse, the communication would be strictly electronic and looked like spam. Wow.
It gets better (or worse, actually). Regardless of people's past choices, the system is defaulting in two areas to more expensive options. It assumes we are all smokers and charges an extra $23 per pay period (bi-weekly). No matter how many times you try, you cannot get it to change you to a non-smoker. It also defaults all participants to a purchase of additional life insurance worth four times their annual salary (about $15 per pay period for me). Edits to this may or may not take.
Again, these changes are happening despite prior communications which specifically state you do not have to do anything to keep prior year’s elections.
Inquiries with HR have been met with "We're sending your comments along to so-and-so." Yeah, that really helps.
It's bad enough that the company refuses to send employees any written information about something this important, and instead sends an e-mail that virtually everyone deleted as spam/scam.
But defaulting everyone to more expensive, unwanted choices and not telling us -- is there some sort of recourse for that?
It's enrollment time for people who work at companies that offer benefits. Where I work, it's the same old drill: If you want to keep the same plans as the prior year, you don't have to do a thing. But if you are making changes, buying vacation days, or wish to put money in a flexible spending plan for 2012, you have to enroll.
On Monday morning, after not having received their packages at home like they were expecting following a heads-up e-mail from HR, employees got an innocuous-looking e-mail in plain text saying it's time to sign up for benefits. The e-mail came from a company no one had ever heard of. There was no reference to our company name and no company logo. There was a link to click on. The e-mail looked like a classic spam or a phishing attempt, so most people just deleted it.
I'm the employee communications person, and thinking it was indeed a phishing scam that I needed to warn people about, I forwarded it to a contact in HR just to be sure. She told me it was legit, from our new benefits administration vendor. It's one thing to get a new vendor that doesn't do things the same way the old one did. But worse, the communication would be strictly electronic and looked like spam. Wow.
It gets better (or worse, actually). Regardless of people's past choices, the system is defaulting in two areas to more expensive options. It assumes we are all smokers and charges an extra $23 per pay period (bi-weekly). No matter how many times you try, you cannot get it to change you to a non-smoker. It also defaults all participants to a purchase of additional life insurance worth four times their annual salary (about $15 per pay period for me). Edits to this may or may not take.
Again, these changes are happening despite prior communications which specifically state you do not have to do anything to keep prior year’s elections.
Inquiries with HR have been met with "We're sending your comments along to so-and-so." Yeah, that really helps.
It's bad enough that the company refuses to send employees any written information about something this important, and instead sends an e-mail that virtually everyone deleted as spam/scam.
But defaulting everyone to more expensive, unwanted choices and not telling us -- is there some sort of recourse for that?
Comment