The University will delay by one year a planned dependent eligibility verification process originally slated to be part of this year’s open enrollment process, UT leaders announced Friday in an email to the campus community.
Employees still need to re-enroll in their chosen health-care plan by Saturday, Oct. 31, via the employee tab inside the myUT portal.
“There have been concerns raised regarding the dependent eligibility verification process in this year’s open enrollment process and the submission of documents such as marriage and birth certificates,” wrote UT President Sharon L. Gaber and Vice President and Chief Human Resources Officer Jovita Thomas-Williams in a letter to all employees.
“In an effort to be responsive to the concerns expressed, we have decided to delay the dependent verification assessment until next year (October 2016). For this year, we are asking employees to simply attest that the individuals they are claiming are eligible dependents.”
Gaber and Thomas-Williams acknowledged and apologized for insufficient communication regarding the need for documents and the reasons for the request.
“UT has never completed a dependent verification audit,” they wrote. “These audits are best practices in human resources in both the private sector as well as in public higher education.”
The communication referenced more than a half dozen other Ohio public universities that have completed similar processes since 2009 and included a comprehensive listing of the documents that will be needed for the October 2016 open enrollment process next year.
“An assessment will educate us as to what types of benefits plans we should be offering to better meet the actual needs of employees. And it will provide a benchmark so that we can determine if we are improving as we work to meet the needs of employees in the years ahead.
“We can’t state definitively what the assessment will or won’t show until we conduct it. After our assessment next year, we will gladly share with any who are interested what the results of the assessment show and what benefits we feel we can derive from this initial benchmarking effort,” wrote Gaber and Thomas-Williams.
Employees with additional questions can reach out to Human Resources through email at benefits@utoledo.edu or by calling 419.530.4747 to set up an appointment.
