A benefits consultant’s job goes well beyond reaching out to you once a year to provide your renewal notice. He or she should serve as extension of your HR team and provide true consulting services on an ongoing basis.

A benefits consultant’s job goes well beyond reaching out to you once a year to provide your renewal notice. He or she should serve as extension of your HR team and provide true consulting services on an ongoing basis.

 

See how well your benefits consultant stacks up against these top services:

 

1. Tell me a little about yourself.

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Before any benefits consultant can do his or her job, he first must understand you and your business, which means being a good listener. The consultant’s job is to ask key questions and then listen to what you share to better understand your business and your needs.

 

2. Let me research the best approach.

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The next step is to conduct a complete market search, and request quotes from top carriers to ensure quality, affordable plans and solutions that meet your specific benefit needs – both monetarily and benefits-wise.

 

3. Here’s what I recommend.

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As the expert, it’s your consultant’s job to offer recommendations that make the most sense for your needs and goals. It’s not enough to just share the quotes and wait for your decision, but instead, your consultant should be discussing each option’s pros and cons with you to settle on the right company and plan(s) for you – and your employees.

 

4. I’ll take it from here.

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After the benefit program is developed, your benefits consultant should handle the entire implementation and the communication to lighten your load and make the process simple. This includes technology setup and training, pre-enrollment, benefit meetings and enrollment.

 

5. Hello. Are you new here?

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Just because you hold an open enrollment once per year, doesn’t mean you don’t have new hires or staff with life event changes who may need to enroll or modify their benefits as well. Your benefits consultant should also help you with that.

 

6. Don’t set it and forget it.

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A good benefits consultant also sticks around once open enrollment is finished – whether this is to help employees understand how to read their benefits statements, answer other benefits-related questions that arise throughout the year or continue to assess your benefits strategy. It’s definitely not a ‘set-it-and-forget-it’ role. So, if you only see or hear from your consultant once a year, it’s probably time to reassess the relationship.

 

7. But wait, there’s more.

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You didn’t think that was all, did you? Good benefits consultants will also offer several other services to help you streamline your processes, save time and free up your staff, including consolidated billing, human resources consulting, payroll, technology and more.

 

How does your benefits consultant stack up to the best practices included here? Thumbs up? Or thumbs down? If it’s the latter, we’d be happy to chat with you about how we can help.