ESSENTIAL FUNCTIONS, DUTIES AND RESPONSIBILITIES:

Manages and maintains the County's health, dental, life, and employee benefits programs, ensuring effectiveness and compliance; processes changes, responds to inquiries, and serves as a liaison between employees and the brokers and benefit providers.
Monitors monthly reports to manage and ensure accuracy in all ACA compliance, enrollment, updates, and other reporting to benefit vendors.
Exercises independent judgment in counseling employees about benefits, information for retirement, leaves of absence, and COBRA in order to provide coordination and continuity of benefits; hold meetings with employees as needed.
Sends out health and benefit related materials and newsletters to employees; ensures employees are kept current on benefit information.
Conducts open enrollment for all County employees and ensures compliance with all required notices.
In conjunction with the HR Generalist – Benefits, processes leave requests for FMLA and ensures compliance with all applicable laws and regulations.
Issues all required COBRA notices and maintains documentation to ensure compliance.
Tracks, manages, collects, and records COBRA, leave of absence, and retiree insurance payments.
Uses initiative and innovation to create, plan, and organize employee events such as recognition, blood drives, open enrollment and other benefit-related events.

KNOWLEDGE, SKILLS AND ABILITIES REQUIRED:

Bachelor's Degree in Human Resources or related field and 3 years' experience related to benefits administration or any equivalent combination of education and/or experience sufficient to perform the duties of the position.
Extensive working knowledge of benefit law and regulations related to HIPPA, COBRA, IMRF, FMLA and ACA strongly preferred.
Proficiency in Microsoft Office suite of applications, especially Word and Excel.
Excellent written and verbal communication skills, and ability to deal tactfully with employees and public in extremely sensitive situations.
Self-starter with the ability to prioritize and work with little direction.
Ability to develop long-term plans and initiate programs for the department and to evaluate progress and accomplishments.