COBRA in personnel policy -- ASAP!

mrs wilson

I am preparing a new Personnel Policy manual, and am relying on some of the forms provided at HRhero. Should a policy manual contain a COBRA section? Or should it not, leaving those notice requirements only upon discharge from employment? HELP!

LindaS

Our Employee Handbook has a short section relating to COBRA but simply states that we will comply with those regulations and gives a short explanation of the qualifying events. It does NOT have actual election forms or anything like that in it.

E Wart

E Wart
I agree with Linda. The least said on COBRA in the employee handbook the better. You can make a "legal" statement/definition of COBRA, but that should be all you need. The rest is provided to the employee when they terminate.

Don D

If I'm not mistaken, legislation requires that we give the new ee a form at time of sign-up giving him a brief synopsis of his COBRA rights should he terminate. But I do not think we are required to publish that in a handbook and agree that getting all that in a handbook is a bit much, and not particularly useful since the notification and policy instructions come later anyway.

LindaS

Don - you are correct in that employees receive the COBRA notice when they initially sign up for insurance and the information in the handbook is simply a couple of paragraphs stating that we comply with the law and provide a short list of the qualifying events. The last sentence infoms employees to contact either the Human Resource Manager or the insurance company regarding any questions. The election forms and other specific information is not included.

lorrie

We do not publish COBRA information in our handbook. We have a detailed section in our health insurance summary that we give to employees after they have elected our health insurance coverage.

Cap

We include the COBRA notice in our Handbook. We also enclude one in our insurance packets when an ee signs up for insurance and we send one to the spouse upon enrollment. One is also sent upon termination. We decide to include in handbook so we had a signature of receipt. We felt this was important for events that the company may not know about - child losing depended status.

njjel

COBRA regs require that the employee receive an "Initial COBRA Notification" when they are eligible for medical insurance. As to putting it in your policy, we merely state it is available, etc.