Setting up a short-term disability policy in Cocoon

This is your guide to adding short-term disability policies to Cocoon. This article will help you understand how to configure your policy (or policies) so Cocoon can provide accurate claims forms, estimates, and coverage information for your employees during their leave.

To set up your short-term disability policy, click Start in your Onboarding checklist under the ‘Set up private disability’ item.

Fill out the required fields for your policy—if you’re not familiar with your short-term disability policy document, use our tooltips for more information about what each field means.

After you add your policy, you’ll see a summary of it in your dashboard under the Short term disability tab of your Settings.

Once your policy is set up, Cocoon can:

Please note that at this time, Cocoon does not estimate short-term disability benefits for intermittent medical leaves, given that most policies have a minimum weekly wage loss clause and the majority of intermittent leaves are periodic (and do not satisfy the minimum weekly wage, therefore they do not qualify for benefits). We will still provide short-term disability forms to the employee so they can apply to double-check if they will be paid out by the insurance carrier.

If you offer multiple short-term disability policies for your employees, make sure to add each policy to Cocoon. This ensures we use the correct policy for each employee’s leave.

For example, you might offer all employees a standard policy covering 40% of pay, with an option to buy up to enhanced coverage of 60% of pay. The baseline policy with 40% of pay should be entered as one policy, with the buy up option to 60% of pay as a second policy.

When an employee is planning their leave and you have multiple short-term disability policies configured, they’ll be asked to select which policy they have. If they need help identifying their policy, we link out to this help center article that walks them through where policy information is typically stored in an HRIS.

After an employee submits their leave, Admins will receive an email and a task in their dashboard to review and confirm the employee’s plan selection.

When Admins click Review policy, they’ll be taken to a screen to confirm or update the employee’s selection.

Note: If you don’t confirm the employee’s selection, pay estimates will use their selection. If the short-term disability policy is later updated, their pay will be corrected in the next pay file.

If you correct an employee’s selection, they’ll receive an email telling them to re-download their claims forms if they’ve already downloaded them. Going forward, the system will remember this selection, so neither you nor the employee need to re-select or confirm the policy.

What if I’m not sure about specific policy details?

We recommend confirming any unclear information with your broker or carrier before completing the setup to ensure accuracy.

What happens if I update an employee’s policy selection after their leave has started?

You can update the policy selection from your Dashboard and Cocoon will adjust future benefit estimates accordingly. If any pay adjustments are needed, they will be processed in the next payfile.

Can I assign employees in bulk to different short-term disability policies?

Cocoon currently doesn't have a method for bulk assigning employees to policies, except when policies differ based on the employee's work state. When setting up your short-term disability policy in Cocoon, Admins can specify state-specific policies under the question “What state does this policy apply to?” With this information, when an employee plans a leave and enters their work state, we’ll surface the appropriate short-term disability policy.

We hope this guide has been helpful. Remember, we’re here to support you so if you have any questions or need further assistance, please don’t hesitate to reach out. Email us at [email protected].