I. UPlan Wellness — Wellness Walks

Make it fun! Walk as a group!

As part of its ongoing commitment to wellness, the University is sponsoring 20-minute walks this summer on work time. Beginning at 1:03 p.m., on Wednesday, May 4, and continuing the first Wednesday of each month through September, employees are invited to take a 20-minute walk.

Employees who are not able to walk at that time due to work commitments or evening/night shifts can arrange with their supervisors to walk at another time.

II. What will the Medical Plan options be for 2006?

This is the first year since we separated from the state in 2001 that Employee Benefits has sent out Requests for Proposals (RFPs) to medical plans. The RFPs are in; they have been studied and reviewed; plans were interviewed; and decisions have been made. The 2006 UPlan offerings will be presented to the Board of Regents on May 12. We plan to have an e-mail out to employees soon after the announcement. We won't have much detail nor will we have the rates, but we think it is important anyway to let employees know that some positive changes will happen for 2006.

III. New employees enroll online

Online enrollment for new employees began on March 10. We're coming close to the end of the 60-day window for the first group of new employees and newly eligible employees to complete their online enrollment.

Employee Benefits notifies employees of deadline

We have a procedure developed for employees who haven't yet completed their enrollment. After support services reviews their benefits election period and determines that the employee is nearing the end of the eligible time period for making elections we send them a memo. The employee needs to complete the election within 10 days of the date of the memo.

How new employees enroll

The memo provides information about how to elect benefits. That is done by going online at hrss.umn.edu/ and clicking on Benefits. Once the employee has logged in (using their Internet ID and password) the employee needs to click on Benefits Enrollment and follow the instruction for each of the benefits options.

We will also be able to identify employees who have completed most of the steps of enrollment. They may stored their election with the intention of coming back to review them before the 60-day window closed. The memo is a reminder that they need to complete the final steps to submit the choices and get to the submit confirmation page.

No enrollment means no benefits

It's important for employees to know that if they do not make benefit elections within the time

Life events online

Benefits changes due to birth/adoption of the first child and marriage/registered same-sex domestic partnership are also online. The election period for these events is 30 days. Employee Benefits will also follow up with these employees.

Enrollment worksheet available

For the new employee benefits enrollment workshops, we developed a worksheet for employees to use to gather their enrollment information before going online. If you think this would be helpful to have for employees who can't make it to the workshop, please let me know at b-gilc@umn.edu and I'll send you a copy.

IV. Upcoming Events

May 4	Faculty Retirement Plan Enrollment 2:30 – 3:30 p.m., 210 Donhowe
May 5	New Employee Benefits Enrollment Workshop 9 – 10:30 a.m., 215 Donhowe
May 16	Faculty Retirement Plan Enrollment 2:30 – 3:30 p.m., 210 Donhowe
May 18	New Employee Benefits Enrollment Workshop 9 – 10:30 a.m., 215 Donhowe
May 24	Voluntary Retirement Program 2:30 – 3:30 p.m., 210 Donhowe

Reminder:

We'd like to keep our database up-to-date. Should you leave a department or the University, or change jobs, please let us know about it. And if you know who will be the replacement DEBCP, we would be delighted to have that information.