Solution Helps Employers Meet Shared Responsibility Requirements of ObamaCare

Employers with 50 or more full-time equivalent employees on their payroll during the previous calendar year have a “shared responsibility” under the Affordable Care Act (aka, ObamaCare) to offer minimum essential coverage to their full-time employees.

On Thursday, payroll and human capital management solution provider ADP announced newly added features to its ADP Workforce Now platform that are designed to help midsized employers simplify compliance with the new healthcare provisions.

Failure to meet this “shared responsibility” will subject employers to penalties. The enhancements announced today to ADP Workforce Now will help businesses not only assess if ACA “shared responsibility” is applicable to them with more than 50 full-time equivalents, but also with workforce planning, eligibility, affordability and enrollment reporting.

New ADP Workforce Now Enhancements Include:

Determining Full-Time Employees: ADP Workforce Now allows employers to proactively track the hours of service of their employees to determine ACA full-time status, which is defined under the ACA as employees who average 30 or more hours of service per week or 130 hours or more per month.
Measuring Full-Time Employee Status Using the Look-Back Approach: ADP Workforce Now provides the ability for employers to automatically calculate ACA full-time benefit status using look-back measurement periods for various categories of employees.
Newly-Hired “Variable Hour” Employee Benefit Status Reports: ADP Workforce Now helps employers assess whether newly-hired “variable hour” employees meet ACA full-time benefit status.
ACA Affordability Testing: ADP Workforce Now allows employers to easily track and confirm that full-time employees do not contribute more than 9.5% of their projected W-2 wages for the lowest-cost, self-only coverage that provides minimum value.
Providing 6055 and 6056 Annual Reports Data: ADP Workforce Now enables all employers who offer health plans to track and report on each individual for whom they provide coverage (employees and their dependents), along with the terms and conditions of the coverage offered to full-time employees during the prior year.

“Understanding the nuances of ACA can seem daunting,” said Regina Lee, Division President, ADP. “This was recently underscored by an ADP Research Institute study showing that two-thirds or 68% of HR/benefits decision-makers at midsized businesses lack confidence in their organizations’ understanding of employer responsibilities related to ACA requirements. As such, it’s important that businesses know that ADP has more than six decades of experience in helping to remove the worry from regulation, and when it comes to ACA, we’re ready to help.”

Whether you need basic payroll, all-in-one human capital management, or a combination of services unique to your organization, ADP Workforce Now has the right solution for midsized companies looking to simplify compliance, reduce administrative work and spend more time focused on growing their business. To date, more than 42,000 businesses use ADP Workforce Now’s cloud-based HCM platform to effectively manage their workforce and address their evolving business needs. By adopting a unified HCM platform, such as ADP Workforce Now, employers gain greater visibility into their businesses. This increased visibility can lead to a competitive advantage as employers use these insights to help mitigate risk, drive employee productivity and optimize talent management processes.

“ADP Workforce Now has allowed my organization to focus on executing our business strategy, rather than worrying about how to manage Affordable Care Act requirements,” said Ronald Weaver, Senior Vice President of Human Resources for American Campus Communities, the nation’s largest owner and manager of high-quality student housing communities. “We’re confident that whatever regulatory changes come down the road ADP will be there to help us manage.”