Human resource tracking of data related to employee benefits requires much more detail than a lot of people realize. Many employee benefits have eligibility dates that need to be tracked that are relative to the date of hire. Some benefits have increased levels of participation available based upon longevity with a company. Insurance benefits, in particular, usually have many different options to choose from and relate differently to different employees. All of this can create a data tracking nightmare if all the information is not kept up to date.
Some companies have resorted to creating multiple spreadsheets to try and track these pieces of employee data. A spreadsheet may include hire dates and eligibility dates for health insurance for new hires. Another spreadsheet may list employees enrolled under each of the companys different health insurance plans and the amount of their contribution to the plan deducted from each payroll check. A third spreadsheet may include a list of former employees who are eligible or receiving COBRA benefits. If a company has retirement benefits or life insurance benefits these may require additional spreadsheets for tracking this information.
Spreadsheets are a great tool for
human resource tracking, but they also have their limitations. Unless you are a spreadsheet expert, creating formulas to pull together information off those spreadsheets into summary reports, or to use in other calculations, can be very difficult and can lead to errors if you miss manually adding a row or column to the calculation.
A couple of the other negative factors in regards to using spreadsheets as your primary human resource tracking tool have to do with the updating required. When insurance rates change for the company, the data for each employee will need to be changed. If an employees number of dependents changes, the info on the spreadsheet will need to be changed accordingly.
A better option for human resource tracking is a software-based
HR system. Human resource software packages are already set up to track these types of employee benefits and have the update features built in to manage updates and changes with minimal effort. In addition, most of these HR systems have reminder capabilities that can alert you when an employee has a critical date approaching such as insurance or 401k eligibility. The reporting side of HR systems software can also easily compile the information you need during that critical review period when it is time for your annual renewal of health insurance.
Why spend important resources of time and money trying to create the perfect spreadsheets for human resource tracking of employee benefits when software has already been custom designed just for that purpose?
