Case Study: Switching To A Broker That Offers Ease

Running an HR and benefits department without organization and structure is difficult. This is something Kandice Thompson quickly realized after she joined United States Tennis Association (USTA) Texas as its Director of Operations and Services in 2016.

To be honest, there wasn’t a lot of organization for HR and benefits when I joined USTA Texas. It was all paper, and the broker we were working with at the time had no technology solution to offer us.

Why Ease?

As soon as Kandice joined USTA Texas, she discovered that the company was managing the entire benefits process by hand, including enrollments, changes, and terminations. She knew that in order to increase efficiency and create a simple and convenient enrollment process, going paperless was necessary.

The first step was finding a new health insurance broker that not only offered competitive rates, but provided an online enrollment solution as well.

My first question to brokers we considered working with was, “Do you have some type of onboarding/benefits platform that’s going to be online?”

TCOR Management answered Kandice’s question with a yes, and three months after joining USTA Texas, Kandice successfully implemented Ease.

Learning Ease

Kandice learned how to navigate Ease from TCOR Management during the 2016 open enrollment season. TCOR Management provided her with an excellent guide and training, and she also attended Ease’s Employer Overview Webinar and read Help Desk articles.

She didn’t encounter any problems when learning the system, ranking it an “11” on a scale of 1 to 10, where 10 was the simplest. When Kandice had questions, she reached out to her TCOR Management account manager who was able to provide her with the support she needed.

The process was so easy. Learning Ease took minutes, and there wasn’t a thing that was difficult about it. It was all self-explanatory and even if I didn’t have training for how to manage open enrollment, Ease walked me through the system so well I don’t think I would have had any trouble.

Kandice partnered with TCOR Management to train USTA Texas’ employees on Ease. Together, they presented how Ease would work with a few slides about how the platform would work for benefits enrollment. They also distributed a user guide employees could refer to at any time.

The Impact

Going paperless has helped USTA Texas increase the efficiency and security of their HR and benefits process. USTA Texas no longer has to manually transfer paperwork from an employee to HR to their health insurance broker. Ease eliminates those steps and ensures that each employee provides the correct information for benefits enrollment.

Ease helps us reduce errors. I love that the system won’t let an employee move on to the next step in the enrollment process until the necessary information is entered correctly.

Ease has helped to develop safety and trust at USTA Texas. For example, Kandice no longer has to keep track of social security and beneficiary information on paper.

Since adopting Ease, the HR department at USTA Texas has been able to provide safety and trust, something our old process didn’t allow us to do.

USTA Texas’ employees like the fact that they are more in control of their own benefits. Many employees have told Kandice that they appreciate that all of their benefits information is in one place, and that Ease ensures they aren’t omitting crucial information that may impact their health insurance coverage.

Favorite Part Of Ease

Kandice’s favorite part about using Ease is the “pure simplicity of the system.”

I really like Ease. It’s just so easy to get everyone set up, whether it’s adding a new employee to the system or open enrollment.

Kandice also likes that TCOR Management will share reports they generate in Ease to inform her of any changes in employees’ benefits, like qualifying life events.

USTA Texas has several field staff, not housed in the main office. Kandice has heard from them that they love that Ease’s solution allows them to securely enter sensitive information like social security numbers instead of relying on email and fax.

Our employees also feel that Ease helps them make better decisions about their benefits because they can go home and talk about their health insurance options with dependents.

Ease: An Irreplaceable Solution

Finding a broker that offers Ease worked really well for Kandice and USTA Texas. With Ease, Kandice saves at least 20-30 hours per year during open enrollment. USTA Texas employees save time too, an estimated 2 hours per open enrollment period.

Kandice’s favorite word to describe Ease? Irreplaceable.

The efficiency that Ease brought to our organization is irreplaceable. Its eliminated the possibility of all any vital mistakes. Company-wide, Ease has been organizationally changing for us.