1. Strategic Benefit
Plan
A spreadsheet at renewal time is not a strategy. A complete
health care strategy should define cost management strategies for a three
to five year period NOT just one year at a time. The right
strategy will provide your company with direct savings for your
medical and dental insurance premiums and also provide you with indirect
savings in areas such as absenteeism, overtime, recruitment and retention.
It should not be reduced to "let's pick the least worst spreadsheet
price" at renewal time.
2. Alerts of Industry Trends and Programs
Are you kept up to
date about new developments in insurance and employee benefits, the impact on you,
and tips to maximize what's already out there? Have you heard about or taken
the time to learn about the Behavior Driven Health Plan? It could very
well be the right strategic benefit plan that meets your company's needs. Have you
made the Flexible Spending Account (FSA) an integral part of your strategy? It means your
employees can increase their take home pay without costing you a dime. You may be
quite busy BUT is your broker truly proactive in making this happen?
3.
Technology Solutions to Save Time and Money
Do you have a complete and secure HR Management System? Does it provide extensive
automation of all your HR-related activities? Does it come standard with features
like these to meet your every need?
·
Can be implemented quickly
·
Increases the accuracy of your data
·
Gives you powerful reporting/exporting
capabilities
·
Does not require you to invest in any
hardware or software
·
Centralizes all your HR and benefits
data into a single system
·
Manage benefits and all other relevant
HR information in one
convenient, centralized location
·
Significantly reduces the amount of
time you spend managing
and communicating information
4. 24/7 Access to Our Client's HR Toolkit
Do you have 24/7 access to
an HR Toolkit? The BNA HR Toolkit is the most organized, all-in-one HR resource
service available. It simplifies access to your most essential HR information, such as ...
·
Benefits and
compensation
·
Compliance
·
Performance
and productivity
·
Employee
relations
·
Recruiting,
selecting, and staffing
·
Risk
management and safety
5.
An Employee Communication Web Portal
Provide your employees
with one place to go for all their benefits information. Each customized portal is
branded with your company's logos and color scheme. Employees will be able to review
their plan designs, print claim forms, retrieve benefit summaries, view their SPDs, access
medical research, get carrier contact information for all your benefits, and links to carrier
web sites.
These self-service portals significantly reduce the amount of time human
resources needs to spend administering the benefits thereby freeing them up for more strategic
functions. Your employees will now have complete 24/7 secure access to all the information
needed to learn, plan, and make benefit decisions.
6.
Employee Education (That Actually Works)
If your experience is where the broker brings in the carrier group rep
for the usual dry, marginally helpful and totally un-motivating
presentation, then you should be getting benefit training for your
employees that provides tangible results:
·
Gets the employees to feel good about their benefits
·
Tells the employees not just what the benefit are,
but how to use them
·
Help employees see how they are on the same team as
you are
·
Help them see how to make better, more intelligent
and efficient usage
of their benefits
7.
Cobra Administration Software
Does your broker provide you with a Fully Automated Cobra Software
Program?
·
Automatically administers complex COBRA rules — You
simply tell the system
what
happened and when (termination, Medicare entitlement, FMLA, COBRA
election, etc.), and it does the rest.
·
Automatically maintains a detailed event history,
including copies of all
notices sent and detailed recipient information
·
Automatically generates over 40 customized (not
boilerplate) notifications
·
Automatically generates premium payment schedules
and includes payment
processing and receivables tracking
·
Automatically monitors time-sensitive data and
calendars important tasks
8.
One-Call Customer Service
Does your broker
know who you are without your policy number, deal with the carriers for you, and
get your answers without delay?
Is he or she adept in resolving "gray area situations?" It's not at all difficult to find someone in
the carrier's home office who can say "No," but does your broker have the carrier relationships with the persons who can
say "Yes?" Does he or she have the business wisdom to resolve
the touchy situations without alienating everyone
in the process?
9.
People Who Are A Pleasure To Work With
It's been said that life's too short to deal with boring people. We gotta have fun with the people
we deal with. Is working with your benefits broker (and staff) an enjoyable experience? If not,
then maybe you should interview a potential replacement. Take some extra time and get to know them. Trust your instincts. It makes your business dealings a whole lot easier (and more fun).
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