Author Archives: CorpStrat News

Cadillac Tax Repeal?

Tax money on top of insurance papers

There’s not much about Obamacare that Democrats and Republicans DO agree on. But getting rid of the Cadillac tax is one of the rare points of unity.

House lawmakers came together to repeal the provision that would have levied a tax on high-cost health insurance plans. The bill awaits the President’s signature, which is expected.

The Trump administration is continuing its quest to dismantle the entire Affordable Care Act, arguing last week in an appellate court alongside a coalition of Republican states who say the law is unconstitutional.

Congress is also looking to find bipartisan ways to lower drug prices and end surprise medical bills.

The Cadillac tax has been controversial since it was included in the Affordable Care Act in 2010 — so much so that Congress has delayed it on multiple occasions.

The provision would have levied a hefty 40% tax on the value of employer-provided health coverage above a certain cap — initially, projected to be $10,200 for individual coverage and $27,500 for family plans in 2018, when the tax was supposed to start. It is now set to begin in 2022.

The goal is to control the growth of health care spending: thinking that eliminating pricier benefit plans will curtail excess health care usage.

Employers and unions quickly banded together to fight it, fearing they’d have to curtail workers’ health benefits to avoid the tax. The battle has been won. The war continues.

 

Helping Clients Attract and Retain Top Talent

Our Client

Kovel Fuller is a full-service advertising firm located in Culver City CA. The agency has served and created content and media for some of the most well-known brands in the world: Nintendo, Warner Brothers, Mercury Insurance, and CashCall. Ever evolving, the agency specializes in breakthrough creative, buzz-driving PR, and performance media. Kovel Fuller has a longstanding partnership and relationship with CorpStrat.

The Problem + Solution

In a climate where talent is hard to attract and retain, CorpStrat Sr. VP Sarena Warner has worked closely with management at KF to build a benefits package that rivals any agency or Media Company.

CorpStrat helped KF build a medical, dental, vision, RX, Life and voluntary benefits platform to cater to a diverse population of employees, which ultimately helps the agency attract and retain talent. KF helped partners support their business agreements by protecting their principals with business key man insurance coverages as well.

Denese Hebert, KF director of HR, cites the relationship with CorpStrat:

“CS is one of the most important, resourceful and reliable business relationships we have. I know I can depend on the team to handle all of our needs, and resolve each issue with intensity and attention my staff expects. They go above and beyond the call of duty to help us through the maze of insurance”

 

Does this sound like our solutions are the right fit for your company? Give us a call and let us know. CorpStrat can tell you how we can help you bring your payroll, benefits, and HR for the 21st century.

The Value of HR Employee Self Service Portals

Consequences of Not Using a HR System to Run Your Business

If you’re not utilizing an Employee Self-Service (Portal) module, or are using one with limited capabilities, your business is already losing the office culture wars. Failure to create an environment built on transparency and trust will put your company at risk at obtaining and retaining top talent.

What is Employee Self Service?

Employee self-service (ESS) is a feature that is available with most modern human resource information systems (HRIS), also known as human resource management systems (HRMS).

Common Features of the CorpStratHR (AKA Employee Self-Service Portal

Employee Self-Service module, will provide the following features for HR administrators and employees:

HR administrators can:

  • Use the module to integrate with other CorpStratHR tools and 300+ other partner applications to allow for easy scalability when requirements call for it
  • Robust tools allow for HR administrators to create a customized experience for each employee connected to their portal
  • The seamless upload of data makes reporting for compliance easy to manage
  • Reporting tools available to help improve various HR processes over time
  • Data is secure and easily accessible to authorized users
  • Send communications and alerts to employees

Employees can:

  • Clock in and out
  • Manage and request PTO, sick-leave, jury duty and more
  • Submit expense reports to their managers
  • Review company documentation and policy procedures
  • Compare, analyze and check plan costs prior to enrolling in benefits during Open Enrollment
  • Access and review benefit selections
  • Take surveys
  • Input and track goals for performance
  • Review and print paystubs, W-2 and ACA forms

Contact us today to learn more about what an Employee Self-Service can do for you, what it can integrate with and more.

Disability – It Won’t Happen to Me!

Frustrated Couple With Woman In Wheelchair Reading Insurance Bill

Why Do I Need Disability Insurance?

The answer is quite simple and straightforward. It is far and away from the most important piece of insurance that every working American should own.

So why then is there such an extreme emphasis in this country on other products like medical insurance and life insurance while disability fails in comparison?

Don’t get me wrong, life insurance and healthcare are critical to everyone’s financial protection and should be held in esteem in a sound financial plan – but more so than disability income insurance?  Not a chance.

If you are between the ages of 18 and 70 and earn a regular paycheck, you need at least 65% of your income protected with comprehensive “own occupation” disability insurance.  How else can you afford to pay your bills should you become sick or disabled? When you’re young and healthy imagining a situation where you can’t physically work is really difficult for most people, especially when their pay earning is received automatically. That’s why so many people eventually find themselves in a situation where their income becomes nonexistent with nothing to replace it.

The Importance of Disability Insurance

Most Americans suffer from the delusion that they will not be disabled during their lifetime. Unfortunately, the reality is quite different.  Over a quarter of working Americans will be affected by a short or long term disablement during their career.  Yet, only 31% of those working in the private sector have any form of income protection insurance.

Why do we feel impervious to accidents and to the thousands of medical conditions and diseases that can harm the human body to the point of disability?  Well, that is just human nature to feel impervious.

And that is when most of the problems take shape, in the first two-thirds of our lives.  We don’t save enough of our earned income.  Expanding retirement vehicles have brought promise over the last quarter-century, but Americans still don’t save enough for emergencies let alone retirement.  One-third of us have no retirement savings, and 48% of us don’t save any annual income.  How can we expect to financially survive in this world while supporting our families without any savings or income protection?  We can’t.  People need personal disability insurance.

Personal disability insurance is available to anyone and everyone who works for a living, employers and self-employed professionals included. The question we all need to ask ourselves is…

What would you do if you couldn’t work? How far could you go without a paycheck?”

How to Get Disability Insurance

Ask us about how to protect your most valuable asset, your ability to earn a living, and we’ll help you navigate the complexities of disability insurance in order to provide a safety net for your future.

3 Productivity Drains That HR Automation Tools Can Solve for Your Business

Managing attendance in a HR system

Administering processes manually within your human resources (HR) department can lead you to trouble. They are time-consuming, which doesn’t allow your HR department to automate or time to focus on bigger-picture improvements. On top of that, they can lead to human error, causing mistakes, which can substantially slow down your overall operations.

With cloud-based HR automation tools at your disposal, you can enhance key-processes that will help your business improve culture, boost transparency and reach identified goals.

Increase Your Productivity In These Areas With HR Automation Tools

Essential and strategic HR management processes should be automated with cloud-based systems, platforms, modules or applications. The following can be improved with HR automation tools.

Performance Management

When this process is administered manually, it’s extremely hard to track goals, manage for fair compensation evaluations or even have enough time to truly create an efficient performance management process. HR automation tools can help improve performance evaluations for administrators, managers, and employees by automating numerous workflows, acquiring advanced analytics, sending out templated communications, providing a customized scoring system and more.

When employees feel properly evaluated and compensated, it will only build the employer brand further because you will be doing right for the workforce. Today’s top talent is looking for fair compensation, ample opportunity for growth and great work culture. Improving the performance management process is just one step into making your employer brand a gold standard in your industry.

Benefits Management

Without automating benefits management process, HR administrators and employees go through a painful ritual once or twice per year. With benefits enrollment, messaging is too confusing and time-consuming to relay. You go through meeting-after-meeting, trying to relay benefits facts that employees just seem to not be able to understand. You have to time your communications and manually send them off to “All staff” just to remind them that Open Enrollment is happening and they better make their selections soon.

With HR automation tools to help you administer the benefits management process, you and employees will experience these improvements:

  • Employees can compare, analyze and check plan costs prior to enrollment
  • Employees can print consolidated benefit statements at any time
  • Administrators can configure rules for specified benefit options to appear in employee portals based on set criteria
  • Employee selections are seamlessly sent to appropriate carriers via Electronic Data Interface (EDI) transfer
  • Benefits deductions sent directly to payroll

Employee Self-Service (Portal)

With an employee portal implemented and synced with a few varying modules, you will be able to allow employees to:

  • Manage PTO
  • Clock in and out
  • Review and select their benefits
  • Download and print pay stubs, W-2 and ACA forms
  • Track goals and manage performance
  • Submit expense reports
  • Take surveys
  • Access company documentation and more

HR administrators can configure the features, content available and access based on company priorities and other rules determined. An employee portal allows you to center your focus on more meaningful projects over being an information finder for employees.