An HR team of one.
Benefits sit alongside recruiting, payroll, onboarding, handbooks, terminations and whatever happened this morning. Nothing about the obligations is reduced because there is one person carrying them, and the deadlines do not adjust for capacity. The answer is not better time management. It is taking the recurring work off that desk entirely.
Three categories of work, none of which need to be yours.
When we look at an HR department of one, the same three things are consuming the week — and all three are things a service team can own outright.
Employee Questions
Is this covered, what will it cost, is this doctor in network, where is my card. High volume, low complexity, and the single largest recoverable block of time in a benefits program. Employees contact us directly instead. Open enrollment is included: employees can call us for help choosing a plan, when the questions arrive all at once and each one comes with a deadline.
Eligibility and Billing Clean-Up
New hires, terminations, life events, and a carrier invoice that disagrees with enrollment. Reconciled monthly by the technology seat, not discovered by you in an audit or by an employee at a pharmacy counter. Skipping it usually means paying premium for people who left months ago, because carriers limit how far back they will credit a late termination.
Compliance Dates
Reporting, filings and the notices tied to enrollment and to events, each running off your plan year rather than the calendar. Held on a calendar with reminders before the deadline rather than remembered. That includes Forms 1095-C, Form 5500 where the plan is large enough to file, the Medicare Part D notice and the annual gag clause attestation, each with its own date.
What a single-person department most often has not had time to check.
None of these are failures of competence. They are the predictable consequence of one person and too many deadlines, and each takes an afternoon to resolve once somebody looks.
A Benefits Guide Standing in for an SPD
An enrollment guide is not a summary plan description, even an excellent one — the guide usually says so itself in its own disclaimer. The SPD is a separate ERISA document, and it is the first thing anyone asks to see.
Notices That Cannot Ride in the Guide
Anything tied to an event or a fixed external date — the Marketplace notice within fourteen days of hire, the annual creditable-coverage notice before October 15, continuation notices on an event — cannot be satisfied by an annual booklet however prominently it is printed there.
A Termination Reason Nobody Corrected
No payroll integration passes the reason for a separation across the wire, so the platform defaults it to voluntary. That field decides continuation eligibility. Checking that field on each separation takes seconds. Correcting it after a continuation notice has gone out, or failed to go out, takes far longer.
One of you. Five of us.
A Team, Not a Broker
For proper coverage of an account we work in service teams of five: strategy, day-to-day, analysis, employee support and technology. You are not waiting on one person’s calendar, and neither are your employees. For you, that means one call reaches someone who already knows your plan, your carriers and your renewal date, even when the person you usually speak to is out.
An Extension of Your HR Team
The work that leaves your desk does not come back as a checklist. Filings are prepared, notices are issued, questions are answered, and you hear about the exceptions. What stays with you are the decisions that belong to the employer, such as contribution levels and plan changes, with the analysis already done and a recommendation attached.
Specialists When It Escalates
CPAs and ERISA attorneys are available to clients through us, so a hard question gets a real answer rather than an internet search at ten at night. Typical examples are a plan document question, the tax treatment of a benefit or a missed filing. We set up the conversation so you are not briefing a new advisor from scratch.
Two things take the most recurring work off a single desk: coordinating payroll, benefits and COBRA as one workflow, and not rebuilding the same paperwork every year.
Send us your renewal.
We’ll tell you whether it looks competitive, where we see opportunity, and the five questions we’d put to your carrier. No cost, and no obligation to move anything.
The renewal letter
Your current plan summary
Contribution split by tier
Enrolled counts by tier
Four documents — two more if your group is 50 or more. Nothing else; every extra one is a reason to postpone.
An independent employee benefits consulting firm. We look at the entire benefits program — cost, plan performance, risk and administration.
Switch to CFH. Unhappy with your broker? Your employees won’t notice. You will. →