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The COVID-19 pandemic has put a great strain on business owners and employees alike. Many employers feel stuck, wondering how they can keep their company afloat while still paying their employees and giving them the health care that they may need now more than ever. The solution to these issues may be found inside their benefits plan, but it takes a knowledgeable advisor to unlock these savings opportunities.

The more your advisor works with your business, the greater the likelihood that they'll be able to help it adapt to all the challenges surrounding us.

A year-round discussion

A great advisor will stay in touch with you over the course of the entire year to ensure that the plan you have is still the plan that's best for your business. An advisor who keeps up-to-date with your business can help your plan evolve with your company, which is highly valuable during the best of times. When an unexpected health crisis happens, though, this familiarity with your company can help your business bounce back faster as well.

An advisor who interacts with your business from January to December will have a far better understanding of your company's needs, goals, and resources than a broker who only reconnects with you when it's time to renew. When money gets tight and employees need to depend on their benefits plans more than ever, an advisor who has seen the ups and downs of your business can come up with tools and strategies that can help your company and employees make it through complicated times.

Connecting with employees

Employee education is crucial to an effective, cost-saving benefits plan. If your advisor is truly making the effort to get to know your business and the people in it, they'll create an interactive and personal experience for your workers through means such as:

One-on-one meetings to answer employees' questions about their plan
Group meetings with your company to introduce or explain new tools and strategies
Remote educational tools that allow employees to access benefits information from anywhere

The more comfortable your employees are with your advisor, the more likely they'll be to take their recommendations when faced with widespread health or financial challenges. Plus, when you know that your advisor has made the effort to connect with your employees, you can rest easy knowing that they see your workers as people rather than numbers in a system.

Adjusting to changes

Even the best advisors can rarely make big benefits changes happen overnight. A great advisor, however, will build you a flexible plan that can be altered over time based on your business' needs. Working closely with your advisor and giving them insight into the inner workings of your company can facilitate their efforts to change your plan based on what you and your employees need most.

If your advisor knows your business well enough to know where to create more savings opportunities, you can then allocate those savings to employees who need help paying their bills. Or if your business is struggling through this time, those savings could go toward keeping your company afloat while preventing layoffs. An advisor who knows your business well can find hidden quality and savings opportunities that other brokers may overlook.

Putting people first

An advisor with a human-first approach can greatly improve your employees' experience, even during times of adversity. If your advisor gets to know your company all year long, interacting with employees and demonstrating their ability to adapt your plan to changes, you and your workers will be much better equipped to handle whatever challenges your business may face.

Jim Blachek flipped his traditional brokerage model in 2017 to focus solely on consulting and building value based health plans. In 2019 he co-founded a consulting only firm Dynamic Benefit Solutions and founded Local Script a transparent pharmacy and marketing organization focused on reducing employer and employee costs while supporting the local community.

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How a great benefits advisor can help your employees through tough times

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