Introducing Global Benefits and its Components

Employee Central helps organizations manage their most important resource, their employees. Employee Central also helps organizations engage and empower their entire workforce including Human Resources, managers, and employees.

Employee Central was created with the end user in mind, allowing managers and employees a full view of the overall company and a view into how peers fit into the overall structure of the company. Human Resources can now see the complete organizational picture, allowing them to make informed decisions by offering a complete end-to-end lifecycle for all employees.

Employee Central allows organizations to:

• Manage employees with a global system of record.

• Capture all employee data in one place.

• Generate reports with powerful analytics.

Employee Central helps to optimize what is arguably the most expensive and valuable asset–your people.

The role of global benefits management for multinational companies has changed significantly in recent years. Inflexible, cookie-cutter packages are no longer sufficient for all employees. With five generations of employees currently in the workforce, companies must provide benefits that meet various individual needs around the world.

For instance, new hires may need financial guidance and career support; many working parents desire childcare services; and employees nearing retirement may want help with their pension plan options.

To meet these increasing needs, more companies now offer benefits tailored to individual employees, including several retirement-plan options, various life insurance policies, and flexible work arrangements or assistance for childcare or care for elderly parents.

An attractive benefits program encourages talented employees to join a company, to perform at a high level, and to remain with the company for longer. High-performing companies that focus on total rewards report greater business results than their peers in critical areas, such as:

• Operational efficiency

• Customer service

• Quality

• Employee engagement

• Employee recruitment and retention

Keeping up with the needs of today’s global workforce can be a challenge. The ability to define, manage, and adjust unique benefits to support the global workforce has historically been fragmented or delivered as a single country solution. Employee Central Global Benefits is a unique end-to-end global benefits solution that helps organizations automate benefits in all stages including new hire enrollment, life events, termination, and beyond. Global Benefits saves time by accessing information from one source: Employee Central. Entitlement rules, schedules, and payment methods allow for the flexibility required for a global solution.

The future of Global Benefits includes the following solutions:

• Standardization of Benefits offerings

• Easy adoption of local regulations

• Faster rollout of policies

• Unified cost reporting

Employee Central Global Benefits delivers a robust, global suite of tools based on a global benefits framework. This solution helps companies overcome many of the emerging benefits administration challenges they face. Companies are able to more easily navigate multinational regulations and compliance issues, while tailoring benefits programs to the needs of individual employees.

Employee Central Global Benefits is an integral part of Employee Central, an integrated HR core suite of tools available in the cloud.

The goal of Employee Central is to cater to markets across the globe. It supports the benefits patterns globally. When we look at the patterns of benefits offered by employers, it ranges from allowances (like meal or fuel allowance) to reimbursements like telephone and internet or child education fees, as well as insurances, pensions, and/or other retirement and savings plan arrangements.

Global Benefits is built on the same platform as Position Management and Time off, which allows for communication among all three solutions. Also, global benefits access is granted directly through a customizable home page tab and from the Employee Central Profile menu. Finally, global benefits can be accessed from a mobile device allowing employees and managers to submit and approve claims when they are away from their desk.

Employee Central Global Benefits requires a three-step process to be a successful solution in an international environment. First, the foundation must be set by creating the main objects that serve as the building blocks for your benefits. This includes setting up the basic look and feel for the benefit creation screen, as well as any relevant pick lists, workflows, and related objects. Then, enrollment eligibility rules and country specific fields help customize these basic objects so they can be used to meet the needs of multiple countries. Finally, add the content to support your needs for each country in which you are doing business.

Global Benefits has a framework that is scalable and flexible for organizations today and tomorrow. The framework delivers functionality required in benefits management such as enrollment, auto enrollment, changes due to job changes, determining eligibility rules and workflows that maximize efficiencies.

Global Benefits is an integrated solution within Employee Central, so you can count on a single user experience and, unified reporting across the HCM suite. The result is the ability to manage global benefits across your entire organization with one single solution. The solution also delivers integration capabilities to drives processes in other solutions. Deductions and payments initiated by employees using global benefits automatically drive processes in solutions such as Employee Central payroll.

The Employee Benefits Screen allows employees to see a clear picture of their benefit packages. They see exactly what benefits they are eligible for and limitations based on various factors, such as job code, pay grade, and location.

You can manage the visibility of pension and insurance fields to be displayed on the Benefit Overview section of the People Profile page and on the employee's Benefit Overview page.

This configuration is supported for only Insurance and Pension benefit type. The field visibility settings are applicable for both administrators and employees.

Employee self-service allows employees to enroll themselves into benefits they qualify for, claim reimbursements, and view a history of all previously processed claims right from their Employee Central Profile.

The Benefits Admin Overview section gives admins a clear picture of the benefit packages being provided to employees. Here, admins can create the different benefit components, and set limits, eligibility rules, and workflows.

Administrators can complete the following actions in the overview section:

• Create and Edit Benefits.

• Enable predelivered Benefits Content.

• Configure integration with Employee Central Payroll.

When creating a benefit, the first step is to select the Benefit Type. Benefit types are classifications of benefits consistently offered in organizations around the world.

The following benefit types are available:

• Reimbursements: Reimbursements are benefits where an employee incurs expenses and submits a claim. For example, Medical Bills, Club Membership, Electricity Bills, Gas, or Child Education.

• Allowances: Allowances are provided directly into the employee's salary or paycheck. Examples of allowances include fuel, higher education, or gym memberships. Some examples are: Fuel Allowance, Higher Education, Gym membership, and House Maintenance.

• Pensions: Pensions are a retirement benefit that an employee is entitled to at the time of retirement. This amount is to be paid regularly to an employee, following his/her retirement from service. To enable enough payment at the time of retirement, many employers offer it as a benefit where they contribute a certain percentage or amount to an employee's chosen retirement fund. Employee also contributes to it. Pension, for example, provident fund, CPF, and pension fund.

• Insurances: Insurance plans provide the protection to the policy holder and its dependents from life's uncertainties or medical emergencies.

• "Other" Benefits: There are some benefits in which the employee is eligible for without enrolling or claiming, such as family day benefit. Employee can view these benefits on their employee overview page. To get a detailed information about such benefits or its policies, the employees can use the link that appears against each benefit.

• Deductible Allowanc: Deductible Allowances allow periodic deductions. They are the benefits that allow some periodic deductions from an employee’s compensation after his/her enrollment.

• Savings Plans: Savings Plans allow the use of country specific savings plans in the United States, including plans such as Flexible Spending Account (FSA), Health Savings Account (HSA), Limited Flexible Spending Account (LFSA), and Dependent Care Reimbursement Account (DCRA). Currently, this benefit type is only supported for USA only, therefore you must refer to the SAP Help Portal for more information.