Eric Thieringer, PresidentIn an interview with Manage HR, Eric Thieringer, President of Eli Advisors, shares his insights on how they help employers take advantage of the technology available in the marketplace and communicate effectively with their employees.
What spurred the founding of Eli Advisors?
The benefits administrative market is increasingly driven by technology and integrated with HR and Payroll. As the technology comes down market, smaller companies don’t possess the internal staff to run, manage, and get the most out of that technology. Eli Advisors was founded to help small and mid-sized companies leverage their technology.
A large company has an HR department with a full-time HRIS systems manager. They may also have an expert in writing employee communications. Those talented experts don’t exist in smaller organizations. It’s just not economical to have them on staff. These organizations have the technology but lack the expertise to get the most out of it.
Eli Advisors provides that expertise. We are the talent making the technology (Benefits Administration, Payroll, and HR) systems achieve maximum results. We support their systems while advising them through all aspects of Benefits, HR, and Payroll.
What are some challenges in benefits administration?
The biggest challenge in benefits administration is the same as it is across the entire HR, Payroll, and Benefits technology space: many struggle to service and support their products. It’s hard enough for a rapidly growing technology company to hire and train employees to keep pace with the growth. Add in today’s very tight labor market, and you can understand their challenge. They do care, but they just can’t keep up or catch up. Great technology doesn’t feel so great when there are not enough talented and trained people to install and service it.
When this happens, the most talented people get sourced to the larger clients. That makes perfect sense – the technology company wants their largest clients happy. But it leaves the small and mid-market customers struggling. It is a recipe for problems when a customer lacks the expert staff and continually gets newly trained service reps. Both companies are trying their best to figure it out, but neither has enough knowledge to connect all the dots.
That’s why we exist. We provide the missing talent to connect the dots and make the technology work for our clients and their employees.
Tell us more about your services.
Benefits advice, and support are our core business. It includes strategy, design underwriting, data analytics, financing, communication, and administration. But as the administrative technology supporting HR, Payroll, and Benefits has combined, our clients looked to Eli Advisors for integrated advice and support across all three as well. Today Eli Advisors has three divisions —EliBenefits, EliHR, and EliPayroll.
About half of our clients outsource something to us beyond benefits. But for all clients, we view benefits through an integrated lens. I think that’s the main disconnect from the typical benefits brokers out there.
Can you elaborate on integration?
Brokers are experts at insurance. They focus on numbers. It is so expensive, and it’s not getting any better. We don’t minimize the importance of focusing on cost – we have over 30 years of experience and a suite of proprietary analysis tools to arm clients with enhanced price projecting models. Cost management is imperative.
But attracting and retaining talent is imperative too. About 33% of an employee’s compensation is benefits. But few businesses discuss (and even fewer track) the results that benefits decisions have on recruiting and turnover. The focus is on the immediate cost and not the downstream impact on other critical business metrics like turnover or employee productivity. We can cut benefits costs, but if it has a negative impact on the other side, we’re not achieving anything. So, we consider the impacts. How can we communicate and administer what we do most effectively? How will we support the employees? How do we keep the employee feeling good while we manage costs?
That’s our holistic thinking approach – both on the front-end design and the back-end employee communications. It’s about thinking through all of those pieces.
How do you help clients customize their benefits to meet the needs of their workforce?
An employer has to figure out who they are and who they want to be. Once you understand that, you can begin to build a program that aligns with those goals. But regardless, each employee, just like each company, is different. They are at different places in their life cycle. They have different needs.
-
We can cut benefits, but if it has a negative impact on the other side, we’re not achieving anything
Because of this, we are a big proponent of providing choices. The one-size-fits-all approach just doesn’t work anymore. And for the most part, the ability to build choice into a program is very doable. Communicating choice is the challenge, though, because it requires a commitment to education so the employee can make an informed, individual decision.
To help with this decision, we run a Benefits Helpdesk. It’s not outsourced. It’s our team. We know why the benefits are being offered, and we know how they’ve been structured. We know where each option fits into an employee’s life cycle. So, we coach employees and their families through that decision-making process at open enrollment. We believe human-to-human interaction is critical because benefits are still a very complicated purchase. We try to make it simpler and less overwhelming. The personal touch and approach are the hallmark of many small employers, and they don’t lose a thing with us. Great advice. Great technology. Super friendly, employee-level service. That’s the secret sauce.
Can you tell us about some of your clients?
We do a lot of work with startup companies with fast growth plans. They need to lay groundwork quickly, and they don’t have internal people with the expertise to do it. So, we take it on, create that integrated solution, and create the custom culture story for that company.
That compounds further with companies who have a scattered workforce. Our ability to support that scattered workforce and our willingness to engage one-on-one with employees really help those companies. And because of our team’s background, we have nationwide expertise that typically doesn’t exist in smaller companies.
We also do a lot of work with pharmaceutical companies. It’s a highly compensated workforce with high expectations and many work-from-home employees. Our ability to become an extension of their company and make those employees feel part of the team fits well into the culture of these companies.
How is Eli Advisors unique to the market?
We came into this business from a large market. We know what best practices look like, and we bring those strategies down into the small and mid-size markets. We marry those practices with a personal approach that aligns with our client’s ideals. Small brokers usually lack the expertise. Large, publicly traded brokers can’t achieve their profit margins with the support and customization we provide to the smaller end of the market. But why not get great advice and personalized service?
We give the best of both worlds and provide customized, personal advice on how to carry a business forward and make it more successful. And we do all of that without forgetting what drives the success: the employees. So, we support them in getting everything else done.
