When someone leaves your company, you can deactivate their Ben account so they can no longer sign in. You can also reactivate someone if they return.

Deactivation takes effect almost instantly, so don't deactivate someone until their last day (or agreed leaving time) has passed.

Once you deactivate someone:

Their onboarding status then shows as Inactive ("This user has been deactivated and no longer has access to Ben.").

If someone returns, open their profile in People and set the Active toggle back to active. This restores their access to Ben so they can sign in again.

Reactivating a previously deactivated employee can sometimes cause problems — for example, it can stop them re-enrolling in benefits they'd opted into before. If you're reactivating someone, we recommend contacting your technical account manager to confirm the benefits they're now eligible for are active, and to check nothing has been left stuck as deactivated.

If your company's people are managed through an HR system connected to Ben, manage leavers and returners in that HR system — the change flows through to Ben and updates the person's status here.

One thing to know: a deactivation made in the HR system removes the person's access to Ben, but it doesn't necessarily block them at the sign-in step the same way an ECC deactivation does. If you need to be certain someone is blocked from signing in immediately, deactivate them in ECC as described above, or contact our support team.

For this to work, the employee must be actively included in your HRIS syncs — you can see this in the same place as the Active toggle. If you've excluded an employee from HRIS sync, recording their departure in your HR system won't pull through to Ben, and they'll stay active in Ben until you deactivate them manually.