Benefits/I Ran A Meeting
Benefits This weekend I finally got into the HR system to sign up for benefits. It's actually the web site of another company (HR for Hire) that provides all your HR needs over the phone or on their website. Who needs people?
Getting to the correct web page was painful. I had to log into my company's portal, go to the My Benefits page, then click to the benefits intro page on HR for Hire, then to the specific benefit pages. Unfortunately, every time I got up from the computer to check my current benefits or talk to my spousal unit about benefits, the HR site timed out and I had to start over on my company's portal. This happened ten or eleven times.
Why did it take me so long to choose my benefits? The health plan was completely different than anything I'm used to. Instead of the typical choice of one plan or another, there was only one plan but you had to choose from among several levels of co-pay or deductible in four different areas. There must have been at least one hundred possible combinations.
To make it easier to choose they had a tool for creating three different health care "options." You could then plug in numbers for how many times you might go to the hospital or the doctor or get prescriptions and a page would come back showing you how much each of your options would cost you over a year. When my session timed out in the middle of all this choosing and calculating, I had to go back to the company portal and take eight or nine steps to get back.
Three hours later I finally hit "Save." The success screen read "Congratulations, your 2005 benefit choices are saved in the HR system. WARNING: You only have 14 days to make your 2006 choices!" Maybe next weekend.
My First Meeting I ran my first meeting, a quality meeting with the S*** project team, a very vocal and dedicated group. I explained what my job was, what information I would collect and how I would run a weekly meeting to talk about testing. They immediately started asking really good questions about how we could actually get enough information to complete my testing documents. Caught up in a wave of enthusiastic responsibility (enthusibility?), someone suggested we meet twice a week at lunch times to pull together the information since it would be impossible to schedule this group at any other time. Everyone (else) agreed immediately.
This is what I anticipated really. Who I was didn't matter much. These people are zeroed in on what they need to do and if I can help them, great. I'll try.
Parking Again Yesterday I went out for lunch for the first time so I could hang out with a Widgets friend at a coffee shop. When I came back, almost late for a Career Makeover meeting, I hoped to steal someone else's place in a close parking lot. The Security guy told us in orientation that this was possible.
I didn't see any spots in the closer lots and had to go all the way to the end of the farthest lot to get a spot. I jogged to the building and was only a little late (a few minutes after five after) but it was okay because my manager came in a few minutes after me. What a great manager.
Getting to the correct web page was painful. I had to log into my company's portal, go to the My Benefits page, then click to the benefits intro page on HR for Hire, then to the specific benefit pages. Unfortunately, every time I got up from the computer to check my current benefits or talk to my spousal unit about benefits, the HR site timed out and I had to start over on my company's portal. This happened ten or eleven times.
Why did it take me so long to choose my benefits? The health plan was completely different than anything I'm used to. Instead of the typical choice of one plan or another, there was only one plan but you had to choose from among several levels of co-pay or deductible in four different areas. There must have been at least one hundred possible combinations.
To make it easier to choose they had a tool for creating three different health care "options." You could then plug in numbers for how many times you might go to the hospital or the doctor or get prescriptions and a page would come back showing you how much each of your options would cost you over a year. When my session timed out in the middle of all this choosing and calculating, I had to go back to the company portal and take eight or nine steps to get back.
Three hours later I finally hit "Save." The success screen read "Congratulations, your 2005 benefit choices are saved in the HR system. WARNING: You only have 14 days to make your 2006 choices!" Maybe next weekend.
My First Meeting I ran my first meeting, a quality meeting with the S*** project team, a very vocal and dedicated group. I explained what my job was, what information I would collect and how I would run a weekly meeting to talk about testing. They immediately started asking really good questions about how we could actually get enough information to complete my testing documents. Caught up in a wave of enthusiastic responsibility (enthusibility?), someone suggested we meet twice a week at lunch times to pull together the information since it would be impossible to schedule this group at any other time. Everyone (else) agreed immediately.
This is what I anticipated really. Who I was didn't matter much. These people are zeroed in on what they need to do and if I can help them, great. I'll try.
Parking Again Yesterday I went out for lunch for the first time so I could hang out with a Widgets friend at a coffee shop. When I came back, almost late for a Career Makeover meeting, I hoped to steal someone else's place in a close parking lot. The Security guy told us in orientation that this was possible.
I didn't see any spots in the closer lots and had to go all the way to the end of the farthest lot to get a spot. I jogged to the building and was only a little late (a few minutes after five after) but it was okay because my manager came in a few minutes after me. What a great manager.
posted by changingagain at 6:46 PM
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