I would have taken an extra step or two as well,especially given 16 years of employment. I would be unhappy though if there was warning ahead of time. Failure to turn in paper on time happens all the time, whether it is enrollment forms, performance appraisals, application forms from remote locations etc. etc. etc. It is especially a problem when it is as serious an issue as complying with agreements with the insurance carrier. Unfortunately, it is sometimes necessary to say "you didn't get it in on time", but that should have been preceded by "this is what will happen if you don't get it in on time".
Two additional comments from my original post. 1) We also have a waiver on the enrollment form which is a positive acknowledgement that the employee does not want benefits for the same reasons as mentioned by previous posters. 2)We have a large number of employees who work in the field and our open enrollment generally lasts for 2 weeks, with considerable "heads up" announcements preceding. If vacations have been scheduled during that period, employees work with the benefits department to make sure their desires are recorded. There are always a few cases of those who either have unscheduled absences, or who procrastinate to the end of the period, and then if we have an outage (utility) or other emergency and the crews don't get back to an office computer in time, we have the original poster's problem. In such cases, the benefits department generally allows another week after enrollment closes to verify the enrollments and make sure those who didn't respond are contacted. We have great benefits so everyone makes an effort and even though we have quite a few employees, with training and advance notice, we have more issues correcting computer problems than catching these situations.
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