The University of Nebraska offers an extensive benefits package that includes health, life, disability and long term care insurance; retirement accounts; tuition remission for employees and their spouses and dependent children; and reimbursement accounts for health care and dependent day care. Leave policies are designed to help employees deal with personal or family events or crises. Please refer to the University of Nebraska Benefits site for information.
Contact us with your questions
Health & Dental
The university's third-party administrator of our health plan is UMR (a UnitedHealthcare company), dental plan is Ameritas, and pharmacy plan is CVS Caremark.
Health plan enrollees with employee-only coverage receive one ID card from UMR. Health plan enrollees with a spouse, adult designee, or children on their plan receive two ID cards. You may call UMR to request additional cards, print temporary cards from the umr.com portal once you have registered, or order additional cards from the umr.com portal. UMR cards serve as both your health and pharmacy insurance card; there is not a separate pharmacy ID card.
Dental plan members receive two ID cards from Ameritas regardless of your coverage level. If you’d like additional Ameritas ID cards, you may call Ameritas to order another set or create a secure account at ameritas.com to access the ID cards electronically or order additional cards.
Health Savings Account (HSA)
Starting January 1, 2020, the University of Nebraska is offering an employer-sponsored Health Savings Account (HSA) option.
Eligibility for Benefits
Firefly is the online Employee Self-Service (ESS) for benefit eligible employees to their personal data stored in SAP, the university's administrative computing system.
New employees or a newly benefits-eligible employees should complete the Record of Prior Service Form, and their Benefits Enrollment within the first 31 days. We will send an email encouraging you to complete both items. You can always reach out to us with questions at 402-472-2600 and benefits@unl.edu.
Full-Time & Part-Time Employees
You are eligible for the NUFlex benefits program if you are employed in a "regular" position with an FTE of .5 or greater.
Temporary Employees
You are eligible for the NUFlex benefits program (except for University contributions to retirement) if you are employed in a "temporary" position for more than 6 months with an FTE of .5 or greater.
Benefits for eligible temporary employees include the following: health and life insurance, sick and vacation leave, injury leave, civil leave, inclement weather leave, and military leave. Temporary employees are not eligible for tuition remission, administrative leave, funeral leave, or university contributions to retirement.
To provide clarity and consistency across the university campus, temporary employee benefits eligibility is as follows:
- If a temporary worker’s original assignment is fewer than six months, they are not benefits eligible.
- If a temporary worker’s original assignment is greater than six months, they will be benefits eligible with no waiting period.
- If a temporary worker’s original assignment was fewer than six months, but at a later date their assignment is extended to greater than six months, the worker will be benefits-eligible at the time of the extension and is not required to work six months to be eligible.
Departments are responsible for notifying temporary employees when they become eligible for insurance benefits.
Changes to Benefits
When major life changes occur, like marriage, birth of a child, spouse losing or gaining coverage from their job, divorce, etc., employees are able to make a change to their benefits within 31 days of the Qualifying Life Event. A Benefits Change Form will need to be submitted, along with proof of the life change event, which can be done electronically within 31 days. For the birth of a child or adopting a child, employees have a 60-day window to complete the Benefits Change Form to get the new dependent added to insurance.
If you are already in a benefits-eligible position and you transfer to another benefits-eligible position and there is no break in service, it is NOT an opportunity to re-enroll in benefits. You would keep your current benefits. There must be a 31-day break in service to be able to re-enroll in benefits. This applies when there is an increase or decrease in FTE as well. E.g. John Smith ends his .75 FTE temporary benefits-eligible position on February 2, and is hired into a 1.0 FTE regular benefits eligible position on February 3. John would NOT be able to re-enroll in benefits.