Not just an API: Do more with deeper benefits data integrations
November 4, 2024
In the consumer market, apps have been playing nice with each other for a long time — users expect that their fitness tracker will sync with their smartphone’s health app and that they can share music from their streaming service of choice on their favorite social network.
In the world of HR, however, the expectation is too often the opposite: that few of the systems HR professionals use daily will easily interact and share data. Every day, HR staff loses valuable time doing simple, often redundant data entry because the different services their companies use for payroll, benefits administration and claims processing can’t talk to each other.
Enter application programming interfaces (APIs). The same technology that has created seamless user experiences in the consumer market can now make it easier for different HR systems to communicate and share data.
93% of employers agree integrating HR and benefits data is important.1
What is an API?
An API is a protocol for different applications (whether on your phone, desktop or tablet) to talk to each other and easily exchange data. You’ve probably already used one this morning: When you open the weather app on your phone, it uses an API to retrieve weather data for your location from an existing database such as The National Weather Service.
An API is not enough – you need deeper benefit integrations
Running a business is much more complicated than a simple weather app, and an API that only shares basic employee data will not eliminate the operational struggles of most HR departments. Deeper functional integrations are necessary.
By making the connections between different systems almost seamless down to the functional level, deep integration can unleash greater productivity, reduce unnecessary errors and increase trust between employees and their employer.
87% of employers plan to invest more in data integration in some way.1
Here's what deeper benefits integration can do for you:
It takes the middleman — and the errors — out of leave management
Many companies say that managing employee leave and absences is one of their biggest challenges.
Leave is typically approved or denied by the insurance carrier, who then sends that information to the employer to enter manually into their applications to help them manage payroll and staffing. As an employee’s circumstances change (as is common with unpredictable events like childbirth, illness, and injury), so do the details of their leave. The carrier continues to update the employer about when an employee will begin leave and when they are expected to return to work. HR must again update this in their HCM or HRIS system.
With each new update, the chance for error increases and the time available to HR staff to attend to other matters decreases. For a company with thousands of employees, it can quickly become overwhelming.
But with deep integrations, the employee's absence data is passed directly between an insurance carrier and an employer's HCM or HRIS system (such as Workday HCM) without relying on configuration and maintenance of costly data feeds. HR will spend far less time reviewing absence reports and no longer have to manually move data between systems — eliminating opportunities for human error.
51% of employers cite the lack of integration as a major challenge.1
It provides employees with a smoother online experience
It’s a common scenario: An employee has filled out the paperwork to establish evidence of insurability, but a week after their submission, they still haven’t received a decision or even heard if the carrier received their form. The employee is frustrated — after all, they did what they needed to do. Why this delay in getting a decision?
Inefficient systems aren’t just a hassle for HR staff — they can also erode trust between an employee and their employer.
Deep integration enables automation of routine processes. Online EOI, automated by API connections between an insurance carrier and an HCM or HRIS system, shortens the process from days to minutes, providing immediate coverage decisions for employees and eliminating the need for paper forms and file feeds. No stops and starts, but rather a seamless, continuous process that can (most often) be done in one sitting.
It brings billing into the 21st century
Companies pay for coverage based on how many employees they have how many dependents those employees have, and what type of coverage those employees elect.
Yet that information is constantly changing as employees join or leave the company and others experience qualifying life events — they may get married and want to bring their spouse onto their policy, or an adult child may turn 26 and become ineligible — that change their level of coverage and, thus, the company's cost.
In the old way of doing things, this would mean that the bill a client received at the end of the month would already be wildly out of date, and HR would have to manually reconcile the invoice.
A seamless, secure, API connection with an employer's HCM or HRIS system allows the insurance carrier to automatically calculate, summarize, display and collect premiums through a simple online interface instead of hours of painstaking work for HR.
Two-thirds of small organizations say they will rely more heavily on carrier-provided technology in five years.2
Unum HR Connect automates many of HR’s most time-consuming activities via secure API connection between Unum and leading HR platforms for a best-in-class benefits and leave management experience.
1 Unum Market View, HR technology and benefits data integration, 2024.
2 LIMRA and EY: Harnessing Growth and Seizing Opportunity, 2023 Workforce Benefits Study, July 2023.
2 LIMRA and EY: Harnessing Growth and Seizing Opportunity, 2023 Workforce Benefits Study, July 2023.