Benefits & Leave Administrator

**Come join an amazing team of close to 900 employees dedicated to providing Excellence on Every Level!** The Benefits & Leave Administrator supports Cascade employees by administering benefit programs and multi-state leaves of absence with care, accuracy, and consistency. This role maintains reliable benefit and HRIS records, partners with vendors and internal teams, supports compliance processes, and helps ensure employees receive clear, timely guidance throughout key benefit and leave events. **Essential Functions** **Benefits Administration:** Supports benefit plan administration in alignment with HIPAA, ERISA, ACA, COBRA, and related federal, state, and local requirements. Administers benefit programs across the employee lifecycle, including enrollments, life events, coverage changes, dependent verification, and employee questions. Supports retirement program administration, including enrollments, changes, inquiries, reporting, and annual 401(k) audit support. Provides clear, accurate, timely, and compassionate guidance to employees on benefit options, HRIS navigation, plan documents, SPDs, and vendor sites or resources. Validates and maintains benefit election data, including elections, dependents, beneficiaries, COBRA events, HSA elections, payroll deductions, and records, ensuring accuracy, completeness, and timely processing. Research, resolve, document, and escalate enrollment, eligibility, deduction, payroll, system, and vendor file issues, including related trends or risks. Partners with vendors, brokers, carriers, Payroll, Accounting, HR, Finance, and IT leadership to resolve benefit issues and support claims, eligibility, deductions, reimbursements, funding, and reporting. Reviews and reconciles weekly self-funded claim payments and requests benefit-related invoice funding. Assists in creating and promoting benefit communications and keeping resources current and accessible. Assists in distributing annual compliance notices, HIPAA communications, plan document updates, SPDs, required reporting, and record retention materials. Supports open enrollment planning, HRIS setup, communications, education, completion monitoring, and post-enrollment follow-up. Validates and tests plan design changes, rates, eligibility rules, vendor file impacts, payroll deductions, and reporting before and after enrollment. **Leave Administration:** Administers leaves of absence in partnership with the third-party claim administrator while supporting federal and multistate leave compliance. Coordinates benefit continuation, payroll deductions, return-to-work timelines, leave tracking, and outstanding items. Responds to claim administrator requests and helps employees and managers understand leave-related steps, expectations, and resources. Maintains current leave tracking dashboards. **Systems, Reporting, and Process Improvement:** Uses reporting tools, HRIS functionality, Microsoft 365, and approved AI-enabled resources to improve data review, documentation, communications, and workflow efficiency while maintaining accuracy, confidentiality, and compliance. Develops and maintains practical job aids, checklists, SOPs, training materials, quick-reference resources, procedures, and process improvement documentation. Contributes to team initiatives, education sessions, communications, projects, testing, audits, process improvement work, and other related duties as assigned. **Job Requirements and Qualifications** Bachelor’s degree in business, human resources, or a related field, or equivalent combination of education and experience. Three to five years of experience using Dayforce or a similar HRIS. Three to five years of related experience in benefits administration, HR operations, and payroll support. Working knowledge of benefit plans, eligibility rules, open enrollment, life event processing, dependent verification, and payroll deductions. Experience supporting open enrollment, ACA reporting, HIPAA communications, COBRA events, HSA/HR…