Find out the top 10 core skills you need to master as a benefits analyst and what hard skills you need to know to succeed in this job.
A benefits analyst will take the primary role of analyzing and communicating the benefits plans to the corporate employees. He or she will ensure that all relevant policies are well understood by both, the benefits providers, the employers and the employees. In addition, he or she will get to participate in management decisions that pertain to benefits plans and programs.
Daily duties that he or she will also get to undertake include; evaluating current benefits plans and proposing changes where necessary, develop reports and present them to all stakeholders to keep them updated, ensure strict compliance of all benefits plans, resolve any outstanding benefits issues that might arise, maintaining benefits database, and participating in budget formulation.
Core Skills Required to be a Benefits Analyst
Core skills describe a set of non-technical abilities, knowledge, and understanding that form the basis for successful participation in the workplace. Core skills enable employees to efficiently and professionally navigate the world of work and interact with others, as well as adapt and think critically to solve problems.
Core skills are often tagged onto job descriptions to find or attract employees with specific essential core values that enable the company to remain competitive, build relationships, and improve productivity.
A benefits analyst should master the following 10 core skills to fulfill her job properly.
Critical Thinking:
Critical Thinking is the ability to think clearly and rationally while understanding the logical connection between ideas in a reflective and independent thinking.
A Benefits Analyst will always seek to determine whether the ideas, arguments and findings do represent the entire picture while identifying, analyzing and solving problems by deducing consequences from what he knows and making use of the information gathered.
Assertiveness:
Assertiveness is the inclination to stand up for your rights or other people's rights in a calm and concrete way without being aggressive or accepting a wrong.
A Benefits Analyst must be self-assured and confident to master the skills to put his points across without upsetting others or becoming angry and allowing the employees to do the same while complying with the company's policies and procedures.
Emotion Management:
Emotion Management is the ability to realize, readily accept and successfully control feelings on oneself and sometimes in others around you by being in complete authority over your thoughts and feelings that are generated whenever your values are touched.
A Benefits Analyst must be able to manage his emotions as well as assist the staff to control their emotions to ensure that the professional reputation, the efficiency, and productivity is not compromised.
Emotional Intelligence:
Emotional Intelligence is the capability to identify your emotions, understand what they are telling me and realize how the feelings are affecting you and the people around you.
A Benefits Analyst should be wise to handle different personalities that carry different emotions presented in the workplace while ensuring relationships are managed more efficiently by respecting your perception and the employee's as well.
Attention to Detail:
Attention to Detail is the capacity to achieve a thoroughness and accuracy when accomplishing a task.
A Benefits Analyst needs to have this prime characteristic and utilize it in a high performing organization that allows both the customers and staff to understand the need to be keen to all the details required to avoid massive costs for overlooked details that are common in the workplace.
Personal Commitment:
Personal Commitment is an obligation that you have voluntarily agreed to fulfill without being cajoled or threatened and are willing to be held accountable for the results.
A Benefits Analyst ought to understand that though adopting new policies and procedures will be met with resistance, the approach by which safety standards are implemented and enforced influences employee's attitudes and commitment towards the organization.
Goal and Objective Setting:
Goal and Objective Setting is the strategic plan that is set and laid down identifying how goals should be accomplished, by who and by what time.
A Benefits Analyst must detect and schedule each employee's goals, strategy, and objectives and keep motivating them to ensure all of them are met within the set time bringing growth to both the company and the employee.
Quality of Work:
The quality of Work is the value of work or products produced by the employees as well as the work environment they are provided with.
A Benefits Analyst needs creativity in assisting all teams in identifying characteristics that will result in a quality product and lead to greater efficiency and increased productivity by following the four critical outcomes of employee retention, customer satisfaction, profitability, and productivity.
Business Etiquette:
Business Etiquette is a basic framework of rules set by companies to ensure and allow you to understand the way you should conduct yourself in the professional world.
A Benefits Analyst must establish the tone for proper behavior in the workplace by making sure all the distinct boundaries are laid out for everyone to follow and understand the implications of defaulting.
Entrepreneurial Thinking:
Entrepreneurial Thinking is a mindset that allows embraces critical questioning, innovation, service and continuous improvement with an attitude of change.
A Benefits Analyst should challenge himself to see the big picture and creatively think outside the box too with the ability to fight all the challenges faced and keep going in the face of calamity and the social skills needed to build great teams in the workplace.
Hard Skills Required to be a Benefits Analyst
Hard skills are job-specific skill sets, or expertise, that are teachable and whose presence can be tested through exams. While core skills are more difficult to quantify and less tangible, hard skills are quantifiable and more defined.
Hard skills are usually listed on an applicant's resume to help recruiters know the applicant's qualifications for the applied position. A recruiter, therefore, needs to review the applicant's resume and education to find out if he/she has the knowledge necessary to get the job done.
A benefits analyst should have a good command of the following hard skills to succeed in her job.