Employee Benefits

Usually because you claim one or more dependents on your W-4. Each child is worth a $2,000 tax credit, and other dependents — children over 17, for example — are worth $500. It is fairly unlikely you owe more tax than those credits cover, so nothing gets withheld.

Watch a longer explanation of this.

Coverage begins the first of the month after you have worked 60 days. If your first day was June 5, day 60 falls in early August, so your benefits are active September 1.

Open enrollment starts sometime in April and stays open for a week or two. Your new deductions begin in May, and the plan year itself runs June 1 through May 31.

Still go through the new-hire process in Employee Navigator and select that you decline the packages offered to you. If you ignore the emails instead, it counts as waiving your options — but declining on purpose is cleaner and takes two minutes.

Health insurance is offered to full-time employees only, meaning an average of 30 hours a week or more. Every other plan we offer is open to part-time employees as well.

No. Every plan can be purchased separately, a la carte.

Benefits are pre-paid: the provider collects payment at the start of the month being covered. Your total comes out of your paycheck starting two paychecks before coverage begins. If your benefits start September 1, the deductions appear on your last two August payrolls.

We double up the deductions to catch you up. Say you start work in late February but need coverage March 1, which is faster than we can normally activate. Both deductions we would have taken in February come out of your first March paycheck, which covers March. Then both deductions you would normally have had in March come out of your second March paycheck, which covers April and puts you on the same schedule as everyone else. After that your deductions return to normal.

This is only possible in limited cases, and only if the benefit providers approve the faster activation.

Not health insurance. Those regulations only allow adding or dropping people during your new-hire period, during open enrollment, or after a qualifying life event such as a birth, a death in the immediate family, a marriage, or a divorce.

The other packages carry fewer restrictions and can sometimes be dropped outside those windows. Email payroll and we will help you find out.

Probably not, but check with that insurance provider to be certain.

If you receive a subsidy for health insurance from Healthcare.gov or from anywhere else, having an employer that offers coverage will most likely change it. You can usually stay on your current plan if you strongly prefer, but the cost will probably go up.

Plenty of employees have been through this and ended up happy with where they landed. Contact your current provider, tell them your employer now offers health insurance, and ask how it affects your plan.

It might, so check with your caseworker. When we report you as a new employee, the state will reach out to us about the coverage we offer. They may move you onto our insurance, or they may not — every case is different. Many employees have gone through this and been happy with the outcome.

Read your state's benefit guide above, or watch the walkthrough video where a benefits expert goes through it section by section.

For questions about a particular medication or medical condition, go directly to our benefits broker rather than to us. Privacy rules limit how much we can help with medical specifics, and they are the actual experts. Email payroll and we will connect you.