Staying ACA Compliant With Workforce Management Systems

Public healthcare reform has been among the major political debates of the past decade, and the U.S. government has taken recent steps to provide more coverage options for eligible Americans with the Affordable Care Act (ACA). For business leaders the current legislation outlined by the ACA has instituted health insurance requirements for workforces over a certain size, giving organizations additional rules to abide by in order to stay compliant and avoid fines.

Since January of 2014 businesses with over 50 employees or 50 full-time equivalents must either provide minimum essential health insurance to their full-timers or pay a $2000 annual fine per employee (with the government subsidizing their healthcare.) Full-time is defined by the Internal Revenue Service as an average of over 30 hours per week during a standard measurement period determined by each company – a duration which is to be no less than three months and no greater than twelve months.

These rules add further considerations for a company’s human resources department, who already have a demanding task balancing the well-being of their associates and the company’s budget. Thankfully, there are workforce management (WFM) solutions with functionality to address ACA compliance, while providing ways to monitor and adjust employee allocation across the schedule to better supervise operating costs.

Weekly Schedule Limits

To begin with, WFM software should provide management with the ability to establish weekly minimum and maximum hours that each individual employee is allowed to be scheduled. This kind of automation ensures that part-time staff are always guaranteed a fair number of weekly shifts to match their availability, but will also never be scheduled over a set threshold where their status might legally change to full-time.

A WFM solution that runs on a rules-based engine can make it easy to set and police these exceptions on a case-by-case basis. The integration of a feature-rich time & attendance component can also offer a safeguard to alert the schedule administrator when they are making a manual change that breaks an established rule.

Schedule Rotations and Flexing

Using a WFM solution that can easily allow for fluid schedule manipulation opens up a number of strategic opportunities when striving for ACA compliance, especially during the busiest times of the year. Managers can vary the number of hours issued from week-to-week as a means to increase part-time employee hours and store coverage during holidays and seasonal periods, while reducing hours worked during the slower times.

This can be an important consideration when selecting your company’s standard measurement period as outlined by the ACA. With the right approach employees could be scheduled for 20-25 hours in September and October then flex up to 40 hours during Black Friday and Christmas, and still average less than 30 hours a week over the selected period.

Reporting and Forecasting

Having global data on the actual hours worked over a standard measurement period is critical in maintaining consistent employee statuses, and your WFM system will need to ensure that the proper dashboards and key performance indicators are easily available to managers. Being able to see real-time notifications for employees that are nearing a configurable average number of hours gives you the option to comply with the part-time rules, or if necessary, let them go into full-time status and become eligible for benefits.

An additional feature that is beneficial in a WFM solution is the ability to see forecasted sales data within the application. This can help managers predict how much labor will be needed across each department, allowing for more efficiency in the amount of coverage being assigned. Forecasting encourages a proactive approach to ACA compliance, and cuts down on the last minute changes that can be both stressful and time-consuming for managers whose efforts could be focused on other HR tasks.

Future-proofing

Healthcare, and employee well-being in general, are guaranteed to remain areas of government scrutiny – not just under the ACA but also with increased regulations on a state-by-state level. Instances of local legislation are becoming more prevalent across the country, with notable examples including California’s requirements for meal and rest breaks and a recently-enacted law requiring sick time for eligible workers in Massachusetts.

WFM users must have persistent foresight to anticipate how upcoming legal revisions will impact their projected budgets and workforce needs. Clients impacted by targeted legislation will require configurable functionality in order to account for the new rules and keep their human resource operations current. This demands a provider with an active compliance team that monitors government agencies and any applicable changes on a state or national level. The results of a comprehensive compliance plan can be measured not only in the money saved on fines, but also in the maintenance of employee satisfaction and public perception.

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