Benefits and Leave Manager

The Benefits and Leave Manager oversees the Company’s benefits and leave programs, ensuring accurate, compliant, and cost-effective administration. The role serves as the subject matter expert for benefits and leave, independently resolves compliance, system, billing, and administration issues, manages vendors and internal partnerships, and provides company-wide oversight of FMLA, ADA-related, medical, personal, military, and other protected leaves.

Job Duties/Responsibilities:

Benefits Administration & Compliance:

• Oversee the day-to-day administration of the Company's employee benefits programs, including medical, dental, vision, life, disability, retirement, and other benefit offerings.
• Serve as the Company's internal subject matter expert regarding employee benefits laws, regulations, and compliance requirements and maintain current working knowledge of applicable requirements, including ACA, COBRA, HIPAA, ERISA, Section 125, IRS requirements, and other federal and state benefit regulations.
• Independently recognize potential compliance concerns, research applicable requirements, assess risk, and recommend appropriate solutions or corrective action.
• Ensure required notices, disclosures, plan documentation, filings, testing, and other benefits-related compliance activities are completed accurately and timely.
• Work closely with benefits brokers, carriers, vendors, and third-party administrators to resolve escalated issues and ensure contractual and service expectations are being met.
• Participate in annual benefit renewals and evaluate plan utilization, costs, employee needs, market competitiveness, and vendor performance.
• Benchmark, evaluate, and recommend changes to benefit programs, vendors, policies, processes, and plan design.
• Lead implementation of new benefits programs, vendors, systems, and initiatives.
• Develop and maintain benefit procedures, process documentation, employee communications, and educational materials.
• Provide benefits education and guidance to employees, HR team members, and managers.

Benefits Billing & Financial Controls:

• Review and reconcile all benefits invoices prior to approving them for payment, ensuring charges are accurate and appropriately supported.
• Compare carrier and vendor invoices against HRIS/payroll enrollment records, eligibility reports, termination records, and other applicable documentation.
• Identify discrepancies involving premiums, enrollment, eligibility, deductions, retroactive adjustments, terminated employees, dependents, and other billing issues.
• Research and resolve discrepancies before invoices are approved for payment, including obtaining credits or corrections from carriers and vendors when appropriate.
• Partner with Finance and Payroll to ensure benefit deductions, employer contributions, payments, and accounting information are accurate.

Systems, Data & Feed Management:

• Maintain a strong understanding of benefit system integrations, eligibility feeds, carrier feeds, payroll deductions, and enrollment data.
• Regularly review benefit feeds and reports for errors, discrepancies, rejected records, or inaccurate eligibility information.
• Identify and assess the root cause of benefit feed errors rather than simply forwarding system issues to vendors or other departments.
• Audit benefit data for accuracy and proactively identify issues before they result in incorrect coverage, employee disruption, or billing discrepancies.
• Test and validate system changes, benefit configurations, eligibility rules, and vendor integrations when changes are implemented.

Leave of Absence Administration:

• Have company-wide ownership and oversight of all employee leaves of absence.
• Administer and manage leaves in compliance with applicable federal and state requirements
• Maintain current knowledge of FMLA, ADA, PWFA, USERRA, and other leave and accommodation requirements and understand how these laws interact with one another.
• Manage the FMLA process from initial employee notification through designation, certification, tracking, recertification, return-to-work, and leave exhaustion.
• Review medical certifications and supporting documentation for completeness and determine when clarification, recertification, or additional information is appropriate.
• Coordinate the ADA interactive process when an employee's medical condition, leave request, work restriction, or exhaustion of another leave may trigger an accommodation obligation.
• Partner with HR Managers and operational leadership to assess reasonable accommodations, essential job functions, undue hardship, and return-to-work considerations.
• Ensure employees receive required notices and communications within applicable legal timelines.
• Maintain accurate leave records, calendars, documentation, and tracking systems.
• Monitor employees approaching leave exhaustion and proactively determine appropriate next steps.
• Provide guidance to HR Managers and supervisors regarding leave, attendance, restrictions, return-to-work, and accommodation situations.
• Identify situations requiring escalation to HR leadership, benefits counsel, employment counsel, or other appropriate resources.

Required Qualifications:

Education:

• Bachelor's degree in Human Resources, Business Administration, Benefits Administration, Finance, or a related field preferred; equivalent combination of education and relevant experience may be considered.
• Professional benefits or HR certification such as CEBS, PHR, SPHR, SHRM-CP, or SHRM-SCP preferred.

Experience:

• Minimum of 3 - 5 years of hands-on employee benefits administration experience preferred.
• Minimum of 2 - 3 years of benefits management, benefits leadership, or equivalent program ownership experience preferred.
• Demonstrated experience administering employee leaves, including FMLA and ADA-related leave and accommodation processes
• Demonstrated experience with benefits billing, invoice reconciliation, eligibility auditing, and resolving carrier discrepancies.
• Experience managing HRIS-to-carrier eligibility feeds and troubleshooting benefits-related system or data errors.
• Experience working directly with benefits brokers, carriers, third-party administrators, and other vendors.

Preferred Qualifications:

• Experience administering self-insured health plans, including a strong understanding of ERISA, ACA, HIPAA, COBRA, and other applicable compliance requirements, preferred.
• Multi-site and/or large employee population experience strongly preferred.
• Manufacturing or similarly complex workforce environment experience preferred.

Supervision Received:

Works with minimal supervision. Issues and concerns need to be communicated to the supervisor.

Physical Requirements:

Normal office setting with regular interaction with employees, HR team members, managers, vendors, and business leaders. Periodic travel to Company locations may be required.