The Office of Human Resources

Qualifying Life Events and Open Enrollment

Qualifying Life Events

A qualifying life event is something that dramatically changes your health insurance needs. When such an event occurs, an employee is permitted to add to or drop their current health plan to reflect the life event. Qualifying event changes must be made within 31 days of the event with required documentation.

Select a Qualifying Event below for details and the specific documentation required for each event.

To initiate a benefits change related to a qualifying event, log into Workday; from the menu in the upper left corner choose Benefits, Change: Benefits, use the drop down menu to select the applicable Change Benefits qualifying event. Choose the appropriate date and upload your documentation.    

Also see Job Aid Updating Benefits - Qualifying Events to guide you through the process.

Open Enrollment

Open enrollment is the two-week period, usually in late October early November, when employees can update or change their medical, dental or vision plans, and enroll (or re-enroll) in the health care and/or dependent care flexible spending accounts. The changes take effect on Jan. 1.

During this period, human resources sponsors several benefits information sessions, both in person and online, to review the open enrollment process and discuss new benefit offerings for eligible faculty, staff and postdocs.

Open enrollment is done through Workday, the university's self-service portal. Human resources main communication is through InBreif, the email newsletter from Finance and Administration that posts every other week on Thursdays. We will also send Workday alerts during this period reminding employees of the opportunity to update or change their benefit plans.