Implementing the Affordable Care Act is challenging for any business, but for those who must provide insurance for temporary employees, it’s a real pain in the ACA.
Below are three of the biggest challenges (plus one solution to them all):
1) Interpreting and Following the Rules
Balancing a complex law like the Affordable Care Act with internal corporate legal policies is a trick. Throw in the chaos of the production world and things get borderline unmanageable. The laws are not uniform across states and jurisdictions, and like most things related to contract workers, are usually less than crystal clear.
2) Tracking Who Is Eligible and Who Will Be Soon
Non-variable employees get one set of benefits and variable employees get a separate set of benefits if they work 30+ hours a week on average. Monitoring when variable workers are getting close to eligibility and what exactly they’ll be eligible for requires time and/or specialized software.
3) Human Relations
The Affordable Care Act is constantly in the news and has people wondering what they are entitled to. Companies who don’t proactively communicate will lose credibility among employees. And, with healthcare becoming mandatory for certain employees, companies have the opportunity to leverage their benefits program into a competitive recruiting advantage if it’s done right.
Solution:
With high-maintenance laws such as the ACA, specialized knowledge is a must, but an internal department for managing all of its complexities isn’t always feasible or cost-effective.
In these cases, a third-party service provider with the right experience can take all of the confusion out of providing insurance for temporary employees. The right provider will expertly handle the pressure of monitoring project-based workers and notifying the company who is going to be eligible soon, what to do once they are, and what the cost will be.
Having a proven system in place and proactively addressing these issues increases trust among employees and reassures them their company is on top of it. And happy employees are productive employees.
Still confused, or interested in learning more about how to manage ACA requirements? We’d love to hear from you.
About PayReel:
PayReel’s clients, who are some of the biggest companies in the world, are constantly immersed in the chaos of producing multimedia content or executing live events. PayReel makes sure they have the right contractors at the right time in the right place, and that everyone gets paid properly. And, most importantly, they handle every last detail perfectly while making sure their clients think nothing of it, so they can get back to doing what they do best.
