BAGI Member Carrington Homes on Offering Employee Health Insurance
Many BAGI members come to us when they feel they can begin offering employee health insurance. Carl McIntyre of Carrington Homes reached out in 2019 for two reasons:
“To attract and retain good employees, you have to offer a competitive package that includes health insurance. And I wanted good health insurance for myself and my family.”
Carrington Homes has been around since 1992 and now has 16 employees. We took him through the many options available through his BAGI membership, including the BAGI Program, the ICHRA Program and Worksmart.
According to Carl, “Once Scott mentioned Worksmart, I realized that my partner at my other company was already using them to provide health insurance to our employees. In fact, my current health insurance was through that company via Worksmart. I had already had a great experience with them, so it was an easy sell. Also, the other options were not competitive compared to what Worksmart could offer.”
When we asked Carl about his employee health insurance experience with Worksmart, he had this to say:
“They are very responsive. My employees can contact them directly with any benefits issues, taking a lot of that work off of me. They are also up-front about the costs of the program, both with me and my employees. I used to pay the full cost of health insurance for everyone, but it became too expensive. Worksmart helped frame the conversation with my employees, noting that this new plan is a shared cost – I as the employer pay a good chunk of the premium, but some of it is on the employee. They made this conversation easier for me and kept our staff happy.
Worksmart also does all my payroll, but not our 401k which is a bit of pain so I will probably change that over to them in the future. For now, payroll and health insurance are all one place and therefore all record keeping is in one place, making everything streamlined and easy to send to my accountant.
Finally, I have been really pleased with the Worksmart Team. They have a person directly responsible for each issue so I can get my questions answered quickly. For payroll, I call Kristina who answers her phone or gets back to me. Everyone I have worked with has done a great job. I’ve not had one issue or disappointment yet.”
For BAGI members, the challenging employment landscape is making employee health insurance even more important to the health of their businesses. If you are interested in offering or changing an employee benefits package, send me an email or give me a call at 317.663.4138.
