Online Training for Benefits Professionals
The management of employee benefits is a subsection within the human resource function. For smaller organizations with less than 50 employees, the function is usually handled by the HR professionals.
For bigger firms with hundreds of employees, the process can become too complicated to be handled by general HR practitioners. Big companies employ benefits professionals that have received training and experience of managing the benefits offered by organizations to their employees.
Employee benefits include policies like group health insurance, disability income protection, retirement benefits, child daycare, training and tuition reimbursement, paid sick leaves, paid vacations and flexible or alternate work arrangements.
Employee Benefits Training for Professionals
As businesses get bigger and hire more employees their need for professionals that are trained in employee benefits also increases. Currently, employee benefits professionals earn an average salary of $48,000 in the US and most professionals earn between $44,000 and $53,000 per annum. As the demand continues to increase for highly trained professionals we expect the salaries to increase gradually in the coming years.
Working on employee benefits can be a highly rewarding career, especially if you are a people’s person and like to help people. Some of the key skills required for this profession are communication, employee engagement, knowledge of medical & health insurance and data management.
A degree in HR can be helpful in getting a job as an employee benefits professional. However a degree is costly both in terms of finances and time involved. A training course and certificate in employee benefits is a faster and cheaper route to starting your career in employee benefits management.
Online Training for Benefits Professionals
Lorman’s courses featuring online training for benefits professionals are built around the needs of business professionals in the industry. The course offers training modules that help improve skills in the following areas.
- Active Listening and Speaking: Specialists often need to negotiate with employees, management and trust funds. The ability to listen to the stakeholders and persuade them is important for employee benefits professionals.
- Critical Thinking and the Ability to Reason: Specialists need the ability to make sense of complex situations and evaluate between alternate solutions in any given situation.
- Ability to Read and Understand Employee Contracts and Medical Records: Benefit specialists often have to go through medical records and employee contracts. They must have a fair understanding of such documents and reports.
- Problem Solving: Employees in an organization come to the benefits professional when they face a problem from regular payroll processors. The problem could involve a medical injury, paid leave correction or issues related to retirement benefits.
- Accounting and Data Management: Data analysis and accounting are key skills required in employee benefits management as professionals often have to work with financial data and bank statements etc.
- Law and Compliance: Employee benefit specialists must be well aware of legal codes, court procedures and federal and state regulations. Legal knowledge of employment law is a prerequisite.
- Administration and Management: Most employee benefits specialists get promoted to senior positions within HR and Administration. This is why business and management understanding is important in this field.
You can find out more about our Employee Benefits Courses online by clicking the training link above. Try one of our courses today or if you are looking for more of a long term plan, try our annual All-Access Pass. Our annual All-Access Pass is a great way to get access to unlimited courses and content for one low price. Start today by giving us a call, email or chat with us today.
