The benefits cart is where your employees will review their benefits offering. The benefits cart will display after employees have added or updated their profile information. Employees can return to their benefits cart view at any point during the shopping experience by clicking the cart icon on the top navigation.
In this article we'll cover:
- Benefit types
- Value categories
- Educating employees about benefits
- Actions in the cart
- Annual Open Enrollment Shopping
- FAQ
Benefit types
The benefits cart first organizes all the plans that you’re offering by benefit type, such as “Medical.” This introduces the employee to the type of benefit before they dive into their plan options (such as HMO, EPO, PPO, HDHP, etc.).
The cart explains each benefit type in plain language to drive an understanding of the overall purpose before the employee jumps into specific plan options and coverage details.
Once the employee has made a selection, information about that selection will replace the description. If the employee enrolled in one of the plans, that plan’s name and coverage details will display. If the employee actively waives the benefit type, then a record of that action will display.
The employee has selected the PPO plan, waived dental coverage, and has not made a decision about vision coverage yet.
The plan information will already be displayed in the benefits cart before the employee takes any action if the employee:
- Has been auto-enrolled in the benefit by their employer
- Is in a passive annual open enrollment and their previous coverage has been rolled over
- Is reviewing their current coverage due to a life event
Example of an auto-enrolled plan
Employees must either enroll in or waive the medical benefit type. That doesn’t necessarily mean they need to log into Maxwell and make a decision. If you’re running a passive annual open enrollment and their coverage from last year has been rolled over, that will satisfy the requirement.
If the employee has not enrolled or waived in Medical prior to proceeding to checkout, they will be prompted to confirm waiving the Medical plan.
Value categories
The benefits cart makes the benefits offering easier to digest and comprehend by automatically organizing benefit types into five or fewer categories based on the value the set of benefit types bring to the employee.
Here’s a list of the categories and the benefit types that fall within each category:
|
Category |
Benefit types |
|
Keep you and your family healthy |
Medical |
|
Protect your income |
Short Term Disability |
|
Protect those who count on you |
Life |
|
Plan your finances |
DCA |
|
Other benefits available to you |
Everything else not found above including Long Term Care, EAP, Travel Assistance, Adoption Services, Identity Protection, etc. |
Educating employees about the value of your benefits
As employees move through the value categories and review the benefits offered by your company, information in Maxwell can help guide them in making decisions for their coverage.
Guidance through their shopping may include:
- Side-by-side plan comparisons for benefits of the same type (like Medical, Dental and Vision)
- Plan documents or carrier websites that are linked out from the plan information page
- Education tools for medical plans and guidance when the benefit offering includes supplemental health benefits (like Accident, Critical Illness, Cancer etc).
- These tools helps employees connect the dots between their medical benefit coverage and the supplemental health benefits you offer as part of their complete benefits package. Since these benefits can help bridge the financial gap if the unexpected should happen, we’ll help educate employees so they can feel better prepared.
Note:
- The order of the categories and the benefit types within a category have been set for the best user experience and cannot be customized.
- If your company does not offer any benefit types under a value category, it will not display. For example, if your company doesn’t offer any disability benefits, the category “Protect your income” will not display at all in the benefits cart.
- If your company only offers benefit types that fall under one value category, it will not display. For example, if your company only offers medical, dental, and vision benefits, the “Keep you and your family healthy” value category will not display.
- The out-of-pocket expense educator is only visible to employees if they are offered supplemental health benefits in addition to electing medical coverage in Maxwell.
Actions in the Cart
When the employee is ready, they can review the plans available to them by clicking Review Options. We recommend that the employee starts at the top with Medical. If multiple plans are offered, the employee will be brought to a new page with the plan options represented in tiles. If there is only one plan option, they’ll be brought directly to that plan’s coverage details.
There are three medical plans offered, so the employee is taken to a new page where they can see their options laid out.
Once an employee has made a selection, they’ll see it represented in their cart when they return. From there, they can view details of the plan, change the plan (if other options are available), or waive the plan (if allowed).
Once the employee has finished selecting their benefits, they can review their recurring costs and proceed to checkout where they can review their benefits before submitting their enrollment.
Annual Open Enrollment Shopping
For employees who are enrolling during an annual open enrollment event, if there are existing benefits loaded into Maxwell, the shopping cart experience is modified to allow for an easier shopping comparison.
Employees will see benefits from the previous year side-by-side to their new benefit offering so they can review, update or make changes easily.
FAQ
- Can I customize the names of the value categories or the benefit types and their high-level descriptions?
The names of the value categories, benefit types, and the high-level descriptions were thoroughly researched by the Maxwell team and cannot be customized.