Because you can use an employee's assignment to determine benefits eligibility, you must maintain assignment information for terminated or deceased employees and their qualified dependents for the purpose of providing continuing benefits.
A benefits assignment is a copy of an employee's primary assignment that is created when one of the following events occur:
The employee terminates: when an administrator enters a termination date, the application creates a benefits assignment for the employee and any dependents with an effective date of the actual termination date plus one day.
The employee becomes divorced or legally separated: when the status of the worker changes to Divorced, the application creates a benefits assignment for the ex-spouse. The person type usage of former spouse is created for the spouse on the day of the divorce.
The employee dies:when an administrator terminates an employee with the Leaving Reason of Deceased, the application creates a benefits assignment for the surviving spouse and any surviving family members. Where appropriate, the action creates person type usage of Surviving Spouse, Surviving Family Member, Surviving Domestic Partner, and Surviving Domestic Partner Child.
Note: The new benefits assignment does not appear until the date after the termination, so you may need to change the system date to view the new assignment.
Dependent loss of eligibility (Advanced Benefits): the Maintain Designee Eligibility process checks the eligibility of dependents of the subject employee. The application creates a benefits assignment for the dependent who has lost eligibility.
Reduction in hours: the application creates a benefits assignment for an employee and any personal contacts when the employee experiences any life event reason with a type of Reduction in Hours.
Note: Creating a Full Time-to-Part Time life event does not automatically create a Reduction in Hours life event. You must first set up a formula function to evaluate the number of hours from the assignment process results.
You can also manually create a benefits assignment if the application fails to create one, and you can update a system-generated benefits assignment.
Note: You set up the auto-generation of benefits assignments when you define the default payroll for a business group.
You can manually add, purge, and end element entries for benefits assignments, provided these entries are not for elements attached to an activity base rate. (When you make an election change or enrollment override, the application updates the entries of elements attached to an activity base rate.)
For US and Canadian customers, benefits assignments must have a payroll with a monthly periodicity since continuing benefits for ex-employees and their dependents are typically administered on a monthly basis. When a benefits assignment is created for an employee, the benefits default payroll that you set up for the business group is automatically linked to the person's benefits assignment. You can change the benefits assignment payroll to another payroll using the Benefit Assignment window.
Note: US and Canadian customers cannot process an employee termination unless the employee's business group has a default payroll.
Customers outside the US and Canada can maintain benefits assignments with a payroll of any periodicity; however, they must have a default payroll for benefits assignments.