25 Years of Benefits Administration, and What It Actually Takes
Reading Time: 5 minutes - Catapult's benefits team is marking 25 years of administering employee benefits for employers of every size.
- Benefits administration is year-round work: plan design, compliance, carrier management, and employee support, not just a few weeks each fall.
- Open enrollment is where all of that gets tested at once, which is why gaps show up there first.
- A benefits advisor handles the year-round work so enrollment season isn't the first time problems surface.
Benefits administration is more than running open enrollment once a year. It’s plan design, compliance, carrier relationships, and employee support that has to hold up every month, not just for a few weeks in the fall. After 25 years doing this for employers of every size, our benefits team has learned that enrollment season only goes smoothly when the rest of the year was handled well. Want the short version first? Grab our Open Enrollment Planning Guide.
What benefits administration actually covers
Plan design and renewal strategy. Compliance work like SPDs, 5500 filings, non-discrimination testing, and wrap documents. Carrier and vendor management. Employee questions that come up in March as often as they do in November. Enrollment is the part employers see most, but it’s one piece of a year-round job. Twenty-five years in, here’s the full range our team covers:
Why open enrollment is where it all gets tested
A year of plan decisions, compliance work, and carrier relationships gets compressed into a few weeks every fall. If any of that groundwork was shaky, enrollment is where it shows up, as confused employees, missing documents, or a deadline nobody was tracking. That’s not an enrollment problem. It’s an administration problem that enrollment makes visible.
What 25 years in benefits administration has taught this team
“What I love most about this job is the people. Our clients trust us with something that genuinely affects their employees’ lives, and that kind of trust doesn’t come from a script, it comes from white-glove service: knowing their plan, their industry, and their questions before they ask them. Today’s workforce doesn’t fit a one-size-fits-all benefits package anymore, and twenty-five years in, that’s exactly the kind of creative problem-solving that still makes this job interesting.”Martha Barker, Benefit Solutions Manager
That consistency is the point. New carriers, new compliance rules, and new plan designs show up every year. What a long-tenured benefits team brings isn’t a shortcut around any of that, it’s knowing where employers usually get stuck and catching it months before enrollment, not during it.
Three things worth checking before enrollment opens
- Plan documents and SPDs are current. An outdated summary plan description is one of the most common gaps we find, and it’s an easy one to fix ahead of time.
- Employee communication has more than one touchpoint. A single email or meeting reaches fewer employees than a short series does.
- Carrier and compliance deadlines are already on a calendar. Not remembered. Written down, with owners attached, well before enrollment opens.
When it’s time to bring in a benefits advisor
If plan design, compliance, or carrier management feels like something you’re keeping up with rather than staying ahead of, that’s usually the sign. A benefits advisor isn’t just an open enrollment service, it’s year-round support that happens to make enrollment season a lot easier too, whether that means evaluating a fully-insured plan or looking at something like our own HERO Health Plan.
Meet the team behind 25 years of benefits administration
The people who do this work every day, not just during open enrollment.
Let’s take benefits administration off your plate, all year.
What does benefits administration actually include?
Plan design and renewal strategy, compliance work like SPDs and 5500 filings, carrier and vendor management, and employee support throughout the year, not only during open enrollment.
How far in advance should open enrollment planning start?
Most employers should start reviewing plan documents and building a communication timeline at least 60 to 90 days before enrollment opens.
Does Catapult help with benefits administration outside of open enrollment season?
Yes. Plan design, compliance, and carrier management are year-round services. Open enrollment is just the season when that work becomes most visible.
Martha Barker is the Benefit Solutions Manager at Catapult, where she leads benefits administration for employers of every size. She's known for treating every client relationship with the same white-glove attention, whether that means untangling a compliance question or building a creative benefits solution for a workforce that doesn't fit the standard playbook.
