There’s no doubting the power of artificial intelligence and automation tools in revolutionizing how businesses operate across nearly all departments. While benefits administration has seemingly lagged behind other major business tasks, it is finally undergoing that same transformation.

Many HR leaders are embracing these emerging technologies to streamline their operations, save costs and deliver better services to their employees. There are so many opportunities and competitive advantages HR leaders can gain by utilizing these technologies to revolutionize a traditionally manual workflow.

In this article, we’ll detail how AI and automation are transforming benefits administration.

Tasks

Benefits administration has historically been very time consuming, simply because so many of its tasks required manual work. Employees have to handle everything from entering massive amounts of data into systems, verifying people’s information, ensuring employees are enrolled properly, and then compiling data for compliance reports.

AI can streamline all of those tasks, significantly reducing the manual work that goes into benefits administration.

Machine learning technology is at the heart of this. It can scan forms and extract info from them, processing documents properly and ensuring that all data is accurate.

While this may require human interaction in the form of quality control and checking accuracy, much of it is done automatically in the background, freeing up your employees for more mission-critical work.

Compliance

Compliance is a major aspect of benefits administration that sometimes gets overlooked. While employees may not ever encounter any aspect of compliance, it requires significant time and resources when done manually.

What AI technology can do is take many of those tasks and automate them.

Reporting under the Affordable Care Act can be completely automated through form generation. So, can COBRA and HIPAA compliance, both from a federal and state-level perspective.

Not only that but AI technology can track regulatory changes in real time as they’re passed and put into effect. This ensures that you are never out of compliance simply because you didn’t know that the state or federal government passed new laws or revised existing ones.

All of this is extremely important because not being in compliance can be very costly. Penalties for non-compliance under the ACA, for example, can be close to $3,000 per employee, and COBRA violations can be as high as $100 per day for every violation.

Strategy and Analysis

Healthcare costs have increased exponentially in recent years. Yet, employers still must find a way to make benefits as affordable as possible for their employees so they retain a competitive advantage in the marketplace.

That can sometimes be challenging because it can be hard to predict what future costs might look like.

AI technology can analyze massive amounts of data to potentially predict what healthcare needs your employees will have in the future. It could forecast if there might be a specific type of service your employees will want, if there might be a rise in a certain type of claim, or if there are underutilized benefits you may want to consider eliminating, all based on usage data.

This analysis can help you make more data-driven decisions on what benefits serve your employees best, as well as give you an advantage when it’s time to negotiate rates.

Employee Experience

AI technology can also bring a wealth of advantages to employees .

First and foremost, it’s easier to personalize benefits administration to each individual employee with the use of automation technology and AI tools. Benefits information can be tailored directly to each employee, for example, providing recommendations to them based on where they are in life or on their demographics.

You can create personalized guides for new employees, for instance, to walk them through onboarding, or help all of your employees better understand their available benefits, which can lead to increased adoption and usage.

AI chatbots can handle routine questions, removing that burden from your HR staff and making benefits administration self-service. When employees are able to get instant support that’s personalized to them, it makes them feel empowered, appreciated and valued.

Beckham Ellis Insurance Group Helps Companies Integrate AI & Automation

AI technology and automation provide many opportunities for companies to completely revolutionize how they approach benefits administration. These technologies are transforming this aspect of doing business, and all companies should investigate how they can use them to their advantage.

At Beckham Ellis Insurance Group, we can help companies handle every aspect of employee benefits, from designing new plans to integrating best-in-class technologies that streamline processes and cut costs.

To learn how we can help your company, please contact us today.