Articles

A New Chapter: Effortless Admin is Moving!

Fri, 07 Nov 2025 20:32:57 Z

The boxes are nearly packed. The finishing touches are being applied. The coffee maker is ready to go. After 40 years of calling the same space home, we're just one week away from opening the doors to our new office—and we couldn't be more excited to share it with you.

A Move Four Decades in the Making

Four decades is a long time. Our current office has witnessed countless client wins, team celebrations, late-night problem-solving sessions, and the evolution of an entire industry. It's been a good home—but we've officially outgrown it.

And honestly? That's the best problem we could ask for.

This growth isn't just about adding headcount or expanding services. It's about the trust you have placed in us every single day. It's about the partnerships that push us to be better.

Purpose-Built for What's Next

This move represents far more than a change of scenery. It's a testament to the incredible journey we've shared with our clients and partners. Your trust, your challenges, and your collaboration have fueled our growth. This new space exists because of you.

From day one of planning, we asked ourselves one question: How do we create a space that serves our clients as well as it serves our team?

We've designed our new office at College Plaza with intention:

For our team: Modern workspaces that foster collaboration, creativity, and the kind of focused work that delivers exceptional results for our clients.
For our clients: Welcoming areas where you can meet with us, collaborate on projects, or simply have a comfortable place to work when you're in Edmonton.
For our future: Room to grow alongside the partners who've made this journey possible.

We're Operational November 17

Mark your calendars: Starting November 17, we'll be fully operational at our new location. As we put the finishing touches on the space this week, we're counting down the days until we can welcome you through our new doors.

Our New Address:

Effortless Admin Inc.
Suite 1400, College Plaza
8215 - 112 Street NW
Edmonton, AB T6G 2C8

Please update your records with our new address.

You're Always Welcome

Once we're settled, stop by and see us. Whether you're in Edmonton for business or just passing through, we'd love to give you a tour, grab coffee, or simply provide a comfortable place to work between meetings.

Looking Forward

Forty years ago, we opened our doors with a vision: to make benefits administration truly effortless for our clients. That vision hasn't changed—but our capacity to deliver on it has grown exponentially.

This new space represents our commitment to that original vision and our excitement for the future we're building together.

Thank you for growing with us. Thank you for trusting us with your business. And thank you for being part of this journey.

Here's to the next 40 years—and beyond.

Admin Checkup: Evaluating Administration Models

Wed, 25 May 2022 20:19:02 Z

When you think about your benefits program, does administration come to mind?

We all know that benefits are a vital part of an organization's total compensation strategy and can make a big difference when trying to attract and retain top talent. It is easy to focus on product offerings and forget that all benefit programs come with administration requirements. Is your organization currently positioned to deliver the best benefits administration experience to both your HR team managing your benefits program and the employees who rely on the benefits you offer?

In our Admin Checkup series, we are unpacking various aspects of benefits administration to help you uncover opportunities to gain efficiency. In this article we'll be discussing the 3 most common approaches to administration:

Carrier direct
HRIS benefits module
Third party administration (TPA)

Carrier Direct Admin

The most common administration model is to use the administration system of the insurance carrier(s) and benefit product provider(s) that make up your benefits program. This default option often seems simple, at least on the surface. However, being the most common model doesn't automatically make it your best option. Most people simply aren't aware that there are other approaches to benefits plan administration.

Providers rightly focus on building great benefit products, and it is these products that you put in place to serve your employees: Health Care, Dental Care, Life Insurance, Disability Insurance, Critical Illness, Employee Assistance, Health Spending Accounts etc. For many providers though, administration is nothing more than a necessary part of the sales cycle. Provider systems are often passive and difficult to navigate. As a result, HR teams end up taking on the stressful role of being billing and compliance experts.

Carrier Direct admin doesn’t scale. Administration efforts will actually compound should your benefit program take advantage of multiple insurers and benefit providers; as HR teams have to manage repeated employee enrollment and data entry in different admin systems, each with very different processes and billing cycles. Restructure your plan, change or introduce providers, and all bets are off.

Admin systems change, processes change, timelines change, and your admin support team changes.

HRIS Benefits Module Admin

The focus of a Human Resource Management System (HRIS) or Human Capital Management System (HCM) benefits module is to help create an all-in-one solution, by bringing some of your benefits administration into your HR software. These modules can be expensive and lack robust carrier integrations, and you still end up administering directly with your providers. The old adage, "jack of all trades, master of none" rings true. You benefit from automatic payroll deductions and easier total compensation reporting. However, the tradeoff is higher cost, data management redundancy, a lack of admin data compliance and process compliance, and, to a greater degree, you still work with the inconsistencies of provider technology (see above).

Restructure your plan, change or introduce providers, and you still end up learning new provider admin systems, processes, timelines, and provider support teams. Not only that, but new provider data feeds can take time and cost you big bucks.

Third Party Administration (TPA)

Third party administration attempts to solve many of the issues noted above, but as we'll see, not all solutions are created equal. There are two core forms of third party administration: traditional vs. tech-enabled.

Traditional TPA

Traditional third party administrators consolidate your administration and billing if you take advantage of multiple carriers/providers. Restructure your plan, or change/introduce providers and your administration remains consistent. The trade-off here is that traditional TPAs often lack market access. They partner with a small set of providers and if you stray outside of their network, you are out of luck: you still end up with admin system and process changes.

Traditional TPAs also often suffer from a lack of good technology. Either they lack technology completely, and you are mired with manual admin, or their technology is outdated and requires that your team be benefits experts to administer your program in compliance with your plan design contracts.

Tech-Enabled TPA

Like traditional TPAs, tech-enabled TPAs consolidate administration and billing. Unlike traditional TPAs, tech-enabled TPAs remove much of the manual process common in administration and replace it with digital solutions. Because of a commitment to digital benefits administration solutions, some tech-enabled TPAs have the ability to integrate with your HRIS ecosystem. This facilitates the push and pull of eligibility data to keep HR, benefits and payroll systems up-to-date and thereby eliminating the multi-systems data entry.

The only significant risk with a tech-enabled TPA is their ability to connect to the larger carrier/provider market. Many still have limited market access which can handicap their ability to administer any mix of products or providers.

What administration approaches have you taken? Are there other considerations that you would include when evaluating the various administration options available? Let us know what your experience has been and what could be done to help improve that model.

Effortless Admin Featured on the Starting with One Podcast

Wed, 03 Nov 2021 01:56:16 Z

This week Zachary Lindop and Michael Ross of Effortless Admin appeared on the Starting with One podcast. They sat down with hosts Robin Bailey and Al McDonald to chat about Effortless Admin's journey from Traditional TPA to Insurtech.

Other ways to listen

Understanding Excess Coverage and Non-Evidence Maximums

Fri, 15 Jan 2021 19:00:01 Z

This article is intended for plan members who are looking to understand what a non-evidence maximum (NEM) is, and why they may be invited to apply for additional amounts of coverage for benefits such as life, accidental death & dismemberment, disability, critical illness etc.

How does benefit coverage work?

To better understand how NEMs and excess coverages work, let’s first discuss how benefit coverage typically works by way of a couple of examples. For purposes today we will keep the examples simple and assume that your benefit coverage is based on your earnings.

Example 1: Long Term Disability Insurance

Long term disability insurance provides you with financial security in the event you become disabled and are approved by the insurance carrier for the disability benefit. If you become disabled and cannot work for an extended period of time the long term disability benefit provides you with a monthly payment to help you pay for your regular everyday expenses such as groceries, utilities, mortgage/rent payments etc.

Disability coverage is typically based on a percentage of your earnings. For example, the benefit could payout at 66.67% of your earnings. As your earnings increase your cost of living typically follows suit. Ensuring that you have enough long term disability coverage to cover your everyday expenses is an important consideration when determining whether or not to apply for additional coverage.

Example 2: Basic Life Insurance

The group life insurance benefit provides a one-time payment to your named beneficiaries in the event of your death. Like disability insurance, this benefit is typically also based on earnings. For example, the benefit could payout at 2 times your annual earnings. In other words, if you are earning $100,000 annually you would be entitled to a benefit of $200,000.

As your earnings increase you may be entitled to apply for additional life insurance coverage. It is important to consider whether or not the amount of coverage you have in place will meet the needs of your beneficiaries should you pass away.

What exactly is an NEM?

A Non-Evidence Maximum (NEM), sometimes also referred to as a Non-Evidence Limit (NEL) is the highest amount of coverage a plan member can receive without having to complete a medical questionnaire to apply. Another way to think about this is that it is the maximum amount of overage you are guaranteed to receive, subject to your earnings. It is important to note that not all plans have an NEM, but there’s a good chance yours does, if you are reading this article.

Let’s illustrate how an NEM works with an example:

Let’s say your plan calculates your group life insurance coverage based on two times your annual earnings. So, if your annual salary was $100,000, you would be entitled to a $200,000 life benefit. Pretty simple so far.

Now let’s say that your plan has a $225,000 NEM. If your salary becomes $125,000 you would be eligible for $250,000 in group life insurance coverage. However, because of the $225,000 NEM, you would only automatically receive the $225,000 that your plan guarantees. The insurance carrier must approve you for the additional $25,000 in coverage. When this additional or excess coverage is available to you you will be invited to apply, if you wish, for the additional coverage.

What happens when more coverage is available to me?

When your salary changes so will your coverage amount. Your coverage will automatically increase with no need to apply until your coverage amount exceeds the NEM amount defined on your plan. Once your eligible coverage exceeds the NEM you will receive a notice inviting you to apply for the additional coverage. Coverage beyond the NEM is optional, so it is up to you whether you want to take advantage of the additional coverage or not. The information you receive will indicate if there is any cost associated with the additional coverage. If, for example, the benefit is 100% employer paid the additional coverage, if approved, would come at no additional cost.

Choosing to apply for the additional coverage

If you choose to apply, you must complete the Notice of Excess form you receive, along with the provided Evidence of Insurability or Medical Underwriting documents that you receive. Depending on the makeup of your plan you may be eligible for excess coverage for more than one benefit at the same time. If this is the case and different insurance carriers underwrite those benefits, you may need to complete more than one medical questionnaire.

Once you have completed the necessary documents, please return them as directed in the communication you received. If your plan is administered by Effortless Admin you will typically be required to return the forms to Effortless Admin.

Once the relevant insurance carriers have reviewed your medical questionnaire they will either approve you for the additional coverage or decline to provide the additional coverage to you.

If approved

If you are approved for additional coverage by the insurance carrier(s), there is nothing further that you need to do. Your new coverage level(s) will take effect when approved.

If denied

If the insurance carrier declines to approve you for additional coverage beyond the NEM, most will allow you to apply again in the future if your health changes. It is advisable to allow 6 months beyond your change in health before applying again. This can differ from insurance carrier to insurance carrier.

Choosing to decline the additional coverage

If you initially choose to decline the additional coverage, either by explicitly indicating your wish to decline or by simply ignoring the excess coverage invitation, you can still apply for that coverage at any time in the future. There is no timeframe in which you must apply and the availability of the excess coverage will not expire unless you are declined coverage by the insurance carrier.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is a Non-Evidence Maximum/Limit (NEM/NEL)?

A Non-Evidence Maximum (NEM), sometimes also referred to as a Non-Evidence Limit (NEL) is the highest amount of coverage a plan member is guaranteed to receive without having to complete a medical questionnaire to apply.

What is Excess Coverage?

Excess coverage is an amount of coverage you are eligible to apply for above your plan’s Non-Evidence Maximum (NEM). Excess coverage approvals are typically subject to the insurance carrier’s review of a medical questionnaire (typically called an Evidence of Insurability form). Approval of excess coverage is at the insurance carrier’s discretion.

How do I apply for additional coverage?

When you are eligible for additional or excess coverage you will receive information about the additional coverage available to you and a medical questionnaire (typically called an Evidence of Insurability form) that must be completed as part of the application process.

What is the maximum amount of coverage that I can apply for?

Most plans specify the maximum amount of coverage available to you. This information can be found in your benefits booklet. If your plan is administered by Effortless Admin, you can find this information through your plan member site.

How can I determine how much the additional coverage will cost me?

The communication you receive informing you of your eligibility for additional coverage will indicate if there is any cost associated with the additional coverage. If for example, the benefit is 100% employer paid, the additional coverage, if approved, would come at no additional cost.

What if I decline to apply now but change my mind later?

As long as you have not been declined coverage by the insurance carrier, if you have excess coverage available to you that you have not yet applied for, you can apply for that coverage at any time. There is no timeframe in which you must apply and the availability of the excess coverage will not expire.

What if I am declined for additional coverage?

If the insurance carrier declines to approve you for additional coverage beyond the NEM you may not be eligible for additional coverage in the future. This can differ from insurance carrier to insurance carrier. If you were declined in the past and are eligible to be considered for excess coverage again in the future you will receive an invitation to apply again.

2020 in Review

Wed, 23 Dec 2020 04:30:12 Z

What a year 2020 has been! It is hard to believe it’s drawing to a close already. There isn't a single person who hasn't been impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic in one way or another this year, and businesses are no exception.

Remember 2018?

Boy how things have changed in a couple of short years. Back in 2018, we published an article on the misperceptions of benefits administration technology in Canada. In that article, we unpacked a study commissioned by HUB International that dug into employer perceptions of employee benefits. In this study, we discovered that “more than 3 of every 4 respondents indicate that [they were] planning to implement one or more cost management strategies in the near future” yet, “only 11% of respondents [planned] to implement a new, or improve an existing, benefits administration technology platform or software solution.” There was an appetite for obvious hard cost savings but not yet a recognition that costs could be dramatically reduced through strategic admin efficiencies.

In that same article, we discussed the technology gap that exists in the world of benefits administration and why employers were not actively considering benefits administration technologies to improve their employee benefits program service delivery.

Fast Forward to Today

Fast forward to today and that technology gap has been closed.

Why? Many organizations, ours included, have been forced to send staff home to work remotely. This is something we never could have predicted and certainly did not plan for. Expected or not, as employers we’ve been left with the task of adjusting our processes to accommodate these evolving work arrangements, trying to keep our teams productive while trimming costs.

Benefits administration has become an obvious candidate for improvement with its time-consuming processes and often paper-driven or manual tasks.

The Year of Digital Admin

2020 has been the year of digital administration for many employers. Whether it is optimizing their benefits programs, their administration technology or both, we have seen a massive shift towards the adoption of technology to solve emerging benefits administration pain points.

Now more than ever employers are looking for solutions that can robustly deliver:

End-to-end digital employee self-service onboarding
Digital employee benefits program content delivery
Efficient digital administration data management
Hassle-free and cost-effective modular flex and flexible spending account re-enrollments
HCM integrations that reduce duplicate data entry between systems
And much more...

Throughout 2020 we have been able to improve on our already established digital administration toolset to better serve both administrators managing remote employees and the remote employees themselves.

Looking Ahead to 2021

While I won’t make the mistake of trying to predict what 2021 has in store for us all, what I do know is that the efficiencies of digital benefits administration are here to stay.

Want to explore what the future of administration is like? Book a demo and I’ll personally give you a tour: www.effortlessadmin.com/demo.

From everyone here at Effortless Admin, we want to wish you and your team a very Merry Christmas, and a Happy New Year. Stay safe and take care of yourself, your people and your families.

Digitizing Employee Benefits Administration

Sat, 08 Aug 2020 03:03:46 Z

Some industries have taken advantage of distributed workforces for years. Tech companies, for example, have had time to experiment with different ways to effectively manage teams working remotely. Ready or not, 2020 has seen a major shift for many organizations towards a remote (at home) workforce.

Today’s workplace communication and collaboration technologies like Slack, Zoom, Dialpad and others have helped organizations make the switch quickly. But when moving from a centralized workforce to a remote one, some administrative operations that rely on people working under the same roof have now become increasingly complex, time-consuming, and error-prone.

Employee group benefits administration falls squarely into this category.

Adapting processes to the future of work

Even in 2020, most organizations are resigned to manual, paper-driven ben admin processes. These processes are in place to meet insurance carrier requirements and are often accepted because of a tendency to ignore problems that don’t have solutions. Problem-blindness sums up group benefits technology today.

The future of work can’t be fully realized without compensation technology keeping pace. Benefits are an essential part of an employee’s compensation package and continue to increase in complexity faster than many technologies can adapt. For example, trends towards modular flex programs, flexible spending accounts, and multi-carrier plans just to name a few.

Even in the simplest plans, challenges that plague benefits administration include: the frustrating complexities of traditional plan member onboarding, admin systems and processes plagued with usability issues, billing cut offs, and month-end reconciliation. In addition, these processes are often paper-driven, require duplicate data entry, and are supported by inadequate reporting.

Meaningful ben admin solutions

This all sounds daunting, and likely all-too-familiar to those readers who work with traditional systems day to day. We at Effortless Admin work continuously with our plan sponsor and benefit advisor partners to find the way forward to a comprehensive, long term solution to these issues. Here are just a few examples that relate to onboarding:

Employee Onboarding

It’s 2020, onboarding should be paperless

Employees should be able to enroll themselves, on whatever device they have easy access to, through employee self-service onboarding. This way they can provide their data, including beneficiaries and plan elections. But it shouldn’t stop there, the enrollment shouldn’t end in paper, even if it starts digitally. A simple e-signature would ensure that the enrollment process is quick, easy and doesn’t require unnecessary followup on behalf of your organization.

Plan administrators should have simple tools that allow them to easily stay on top of their outstanding enrollments. Tools that proactively keep them in the loop and reduce the chance of late applicants.

In practice, when organizations adopt paperless onboarding processes they can save up to 90% of the time they used to invest in managing paper-driven enrollment processes. In light of real experiences like these, sticking to paper is just crazy.

See the onboarding experience in action

Content Distribution

Digital delivery, direct to the employee

Once an employee is enrolled, they need information about their new plan. This often includes benefits booklets, health and dental claims ID cards etc. Traditionally this has been delivered as paper documentation that needs to be physically distributed. Nowadays it’s often distributed by way of email, which still needs to be manually distributed, only electronically. A not so obvious problem with each of these approaches is that they are not secure.

Information should be delivered automatically, electronically, and securely directly to the newly eligible employees. Proper digital delivery like this ensures timely and secure access to important information about the benefits program you are extending to your employees.

Learn more about the plan member experience

Automatic Re-enrollment

Flex Plans should add flexibility… not arduous process

Do you offer a flexible spending account or a modular flex plan? These are great products for employees but the processes for managing them are cumbersome at best. These programs are typically manual, error-prone and costly in both time and effort for your administration team, not to mention your employee population.

Flexible spending accounts and modular flex re-enrollment should be even simpler than an employee’s initial digital onboarding. Automatic, simple and secure re-enrollments - no paper.

See modular flex enrollment and re-enrollment in action

The solution highlights the problem

Taking some time to unpack what an efficient digital administration experience should look like brings to light the administration challenges that many organizations are experiencing today. Transitioning to a true digital solution would save significant time, effort and cost and increase data compliance.

What if it existed?

Here at Effortless Admin, we started by tackling the efficiencies described above (with a bunch of other digital efficiencies mixed in along the way). We don’t have it all figured out but we wake up each and every day with a single focused goal of bringing solutions to complex problems. And there is always more work to be done.

Are there other administrative functions that take up too much of your team’s time? Can you think of any redundant processes you perform or liabilities that exist? Please let us know, maybe we have a solution for it. If we don’t let’s talk about building a solution that solves that problem in a meaningful way. We would love to hear from you.

Get in touch

Coronavirus (COVID-19): Information and Links

Thu, 12 Mar 2020 23:32:06 Z

This article will be updated as information is made available. Last Updated Monday, October 19, 2020.

In response to the ongoing spread of the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) we have compiled some helpful links that provide information about the Government of Canada’s response to the virus as well as information provided by various insurance carriers.

Official COVID-19 Updates

Information about the spread of COVID-19 in Canada can be found on the Government of Canada’s website here:

Government of Canada Coronavirus disease (COVID-19): Outbreak Updates

At the time of publishing, there is no vaccine to protect against COVID-19. As such, taking personal and corporate precautionary measures is important.

Being Prepared as a Workplace

Detailed information from the WHO on getting your workplace ready for the coronavirus can be found here:

Getting your workplace ready for COVID-19
Coronavirus disease (COVID-19): Being prepared

Group Benefits Considerations

Travel Benefits

Group benefits travel coverages may not be valid if travelling to a country with the following travel advisories issued:

Avoid non-essential travel
Avoid all travel

Any travel to a region with a travel advisory is strongly discouraged and can result in the denial of travel medical claims. Up to date information on current travel advisories issued by the Government of Canada can be found here:

Travel Advice and Advisories
Coronavirus disease (COVID-19): Travel advice

For more information about your group benefits travel coverage, view the links below or talk to your advisor or travel provider directly. Contact information can be found on your benefits booklet or you plan administration or plan member site.

Group Benefits Coverage Questions

Should you have any questions regarding benefit coverages, please contact your group benefits advisor, or the appropriate provider directly.

Specific Insurance Carrier Communications

For more information on insurance carrier specific coronavirus literature please see the links below.

Why Platform Integrations are the Future of HR Tech

Tue, 21 Jan 2020 23:23:33 Z

The term “Best-In-Class” is a common claim made by many companies, especially technology companies. You’ve likely heard it before and may have dismissed it as marketing jargon.

In this article, we’ll unpack the meaning of the term Best-In-Class and how we understand it in terms of HR Technology now, and into the future. BusinessDictionary.com defines “best in class” as “the highest current performance level in an industry, used as a standard or benchmark to be equaled or exceeded”. That’s a high bar.

What is Best-in-Class in the HR Tech Space?

Since the rise of Zenefits, an increasing number of HR Tech firms have gone to market with all-in-one HR, Payroll and Benefits Administration solutions, and have made Best-In-Class claims for their products. There is, however, an issue with this: HR Tech crosses many different industries, from recruitment through human resource management, payroll, and benefits admin. There are a lot of unique spaces to be mastered.

From our experience, the HR Tech leader that recognized this issue and took advantage of it best was BambooHR, which has, since its inception, built out an integrated partner marketplace so that BambooHR customers can leverage the Best-In-Class solutions available from different vendors for their specific needs.

Achieving True Best-in-Class Solutions

So what is an integration? Put simply, it is a way for two different software systems to talk to each other. Integrating systems means that users don’t have to duplicate data entry between them. Some modern platforms, like BambooHR have application programming interfaces (APIs), that facilitate communication with other platforms efficiently. While other platforms rely on file transfers to pass information back and forth. But beware, some older systems can make integration difficult if not impossible.

The BambooHR integration marketplace continues to grow and other HR Tech firms are increasingly moving to this approach. The reason for this trend is simple: HR, Payroll and Benefits Admin are not the same industry, and so for an all-in-one solution to be Best-In-Class, it would have to be the highest current performer in 3 industries… which is no easy task. Each of these industries is continuously being driven by high end market participants.

This trend is continuing to accelerate as customers, who were at first excited by the seamless experience promised by all-in-one solutions, are realizing that it is difficult for one platform to be the best in class for all industries at all stages of a company’s life cycle. For example, a company may really like one aspect of its HR Tech, like its payroll system, while dreading its bolted-on benefits admin system.

As the availability of integrations becomes greater, a company’s management can begin to ask the correct question, that is:

What is our Best-In-Class solution?

Learn more about how Effortless Admin’s integrates with other best in class solutions.

Why Employers ❤️ Effortless Admin

Tue, 17 Sep 2019 21:18:45 Z

Your ability to effectively manage employee benefits should not be dependent on what benefit providers make up your plan at any given time. That’s ridiculous. Be independent with Effortless Admin and take control of your company benefits plan across all plan changes over time.

Check out our latest video on why employers choose Effortless Admin.

Adopting a “Don't Make Me Think” Design Philosophy

Wed, 28 Aug 2019 17:35:40 Z

User Experience (UX) design and User Interface (UI) design are both complex and multi-faceted software design disciplines. For those just starting out in their design career, or those who only wear these hats part-time, these disciplines can sometimes feel overwhelming. For a lot of small to midsize companies, having dedicated UX/UI professionals just isn't feasible.

This doesn't, however, mean your organization can't develop engaging, easy to use, and aesthetically pleasing designs. I believe that anyone can significantly improve their design chops by keeping one simple end-user mantra in mind when they design just about anything:

Don't make me think!

The Book

Let me back up a step. One of my favorite user experience books of all time is Steve Krug's classic "Don't Make Me Think".

I first discovered this book when it was in its second edition back in 2007. It was around this time that I really began to dig into the whys and hows of effective user interface design.

It is a relatively short book that is packed full of easy to understand and very valuable insights. At times it may feel a bit dated, but its principles go deeper than current design trends to the core of design: understanding how users interact with your product.

The “don’t make me think” philosophy is geared towards UI/UX design but its principles (as we’ll see below) can be applied to any design oriented discipline.

The Application

It's all about asking questions. Then answering them.

The trick though is what you do with the answers. You answer each question by improving your design to address the questions before they even arise for the end user. You are looking to make the thing you are designing self-evident. I know that not everything can be completely self-evident. But that is the idea.

Remove as many barriers to understanding as possible by iterating through this question and answer process until you've addressed all of the questions in one form or another.

Consider also that better designs work to minimize cognitive load. That is, the more effort involved in understanding your design, the less usable your design is. By reducing cognitive load, the user has more patience for the unplanned hiccups they may experience with your design. And the unexpected always comes up (Murphy’s Law), so consider this in your design by putting in the work to make it easy to understand.

Let's look at a few examples of how this iterative question and answer approach to design can work in practice.

The Examples

Business Card Design

First, let’s look at an example of how we used this approach to improve our business card designs. This is the card we started with:

What questions might arise when a prospect receives this card, or goes to use the information on the card?

Where do I put this?
It's an odd shape and doesn't fit my wallet or card holder. The risk here is the card may be lost or tossed.
Where can I write on this card?
I want to write some information on the card about the person who gave it to me.
Which phone number do I use to contact his person?
There are multiple numbers that have similar priority.
What company is this for again?
I need to check both sides of the card to get a complete picture.

After asking then answering these questions, we came up with this new design:

Where do I put this?
We sacrificed a unique square card size for a standard card size that will work with any card organizing system the recipient may have in place.
Where can I write on this card?
We added white-space to the card to make room for the recipient to take notes on the card. And, we made sure the white-space was actually white.
Which phone number do I use to contact this person?
We clearly identified the purpose of the various phone numbers.
What company is this for again?
Branding was placed on both sides of the card.

Let's look at another example.

Software Design

Next up is an example of how we used this approach to improve the input of basic personal information. In order to customize the experience of the system for users we (optionally) ask users for a preferred name.

Here is the user interface we started with:

What questions might arise when a user encounters this interface and attempts to enter their name? Here are a few issues we discovered:

What is a preferred name?
Why are you asking me for a preferred name?
Is providing a preferred name required? What if I don’t have one?
Could users accidentally enter their last name in the preferred name field?

After asking then answering these questions, we came up with the following iteration in our design:

What is a preferred name?
We clarified what a preferred name is through more descriptive text.
Why are you asking me for a preferred name?
By clarifying what a preferred name is we also implicitly answered this question.
Is providing a preferred name required?
The process for setting a preferred name was made obviously optional.
Could users accidentally enter their last name in the preferred name field?
By forcing the user to intentionally choose to enter a preferred name we removed the risk of accidentally entering their last name in this field.

The Challenge

Try using this simple “Don’t Make Me Think” approach on your next design project. Once you think you've arrived at the right solution, set it aside for a while before coming back to it and intentionally working it through with fresh eyes looking for questions that your end user might have. Then work to answer those questions through the design itself.

Keep each prior iteration around to see how your designs improve as you iterate through this process and apply it over time.

In this article we considered how users actually use something, and how to use this knowledge to improve our designs. The other side of the equation relates to aesthetics or how the user perceives something. We'll consider the impact of aesthetics on user experience in a future article. Stay tuned.

Privacy Law: What’s the Big Idea?

Fri, 02 Aug 2019 20:09:12 Z

So, you’ve probably heard about privacy law.

And you’ve probably heard about the idea that you need to consent to the use your personal information data.

And you might have even heard about some of the specific acts that are meant to protect your personal information, like these:

Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act, SC 2000, c-5
Personal Information Privacy Act, SA 2003, c. P-6.5
Personal Information Privacy Act, SBC 2003, c. 63
Act Respecting the Protection of Personal Information in the Private Sector, CQLR, c. P-39.7

But, if you are like most people, there’s a good chance you haven’t heard about the base idea that holds these laws together. While being normal, this is a bit odd, because it’s that base idea that can help you understand generally how these laws will apply to all the different commercial or personal aspects of your life.

Most people usually think of online advertisements based on our usage data from companies like Google and Facebook when thinking about privacy law. And that’s because it is in fact a great example of when Privacy Law will apply, and when it can be breached…

Facebook to be fined $5B for Cambridge Analytica privacy violations
147 million people affected by the Equifax data breach

We use websites like Google or YouTube to search and watch videos, or Facebook to maintain social networks, and in turn these companies give us a “free user experience”. But what we all seem to be understanding on an increasing basis is that these companies are leveraging our data to sell to companies for hyper targeted advertising.

But did you know that these privacy laws apply to all of your personal information… not just your search history?

It’s not just internet companies that collect, hold, use, or share your personal information. In fact, most organizations do, in all types of settings. And this is a reality these laws are trying to deal with.

Put simply, privacy laws are trying to recognize the fact that organizations will have a reasonable need to collect, use, and disclose some of your information, and the law is trying to balance this fact with the right of the individual to have his or her personal information protected, and to have transparency as to that use in order to prevent unreasonable uses. Drilling down further, the key here is the “reasonable” standard. For example, a clinic will need your health card number… but it would be unreasonable for it to take your social insurance number.

Here it is in legalese

Canada – PIPEDA (S.C. 2000, c.5)
Part 1 - Protection of Personal Information in the Private Sector
Section 3 - Purpose

The purpose of this Part is to establish, in an era in which technology increasingly facilitates the circulation and exchange of information, rules to govern the collection, use and disclosure of personal information in a manner that recognizes the right of privacy of individuals with respect to their personal information and the need of organizations to collect, use or disclose personal information for purposes that a reasonable person would consider appropriate in the circumstances

Alberta - PIPA (S.A. 2003, c P 6.5)
Section 3 - Purpose

The purpose of this Act is to govern the collection, use and disclosure of personal information by organizations in a manner that recognizes both the right of an individual to have his or her personal information protected and the need of organizations to collect, use or disclose personal information for purposes that are reasonable.

Come back for part 2 of this series on a discussion of “Consent” … it’s not as straightforward as you might assume.

Increase Employee Productivity and Satisfaction Through Exercise (at Work)

Tue, 07 May 2019 18:35:11 Z

We all know that exercise is good. It’s common knowledge that proper exercise can work to prevent weight gain and even help maintain weight loss. It is also well acknowledged that exercise can help to reduce the likelihood, and sometimes even prevent, certain diseases and health conditions. But did you know that regular exercise also helps improve your mood?

According to the Mayo Clinic, exercise has two primary influences on mood:

The first is that exercise can improve the way you feel about your body. Further to that, regular sustained physical activity can have long term positive physiological effects that go beyond weight loss to include increased self-confidence and self-esteem.

The second mood influencer is the effect that exercise has on your brain: physical activity “stimulates various brain chemicals that may leave you feeling happier, more relaxed and less anxious” (Mayo Clinic). That is a huge benefit in a day in age where life is often fast paced and stressful.

Exercise at Work = More Productivity

What’s even more interesting is that recent research has found that exercise during work hours can improve an employee’s productivity while they are at work. A study in the International Journal of Workplace Health Management found that exercise performed during the workday can improve not only an employee’s mood but their work performance as well.

According to the study, employees that exercised during the workday reported:

A 21% improvement to concentration
A 41% increase in motivation
80% report better interactions with coworkers
27% report a greater capacity to handle stressful situations

The magnitude of these increases in self-reported motivation, concentration, capacity for stress and interpersonal skills is astounding.

We put these ideas to the test

Here at Effortless Admin we just had to put this to the test (although in a very non-scientific way). In the fall of 2018 a group of us began to taking small breaks to exercise throughout the day. These mini-workouts were typically short and high-intensity. We tried all sorts of different types of physical activity throughout the day, including:

Short, high intensity YouTube workouts
Pushup or pullup breaks throughout the day
Bring Sally Up challenges
Walks around the block

Other than body weight exercises the only equipment on hand was a door frame pullup bar and comfortable shoes.

Out of those of us that participated consistently almost everyone found that these short workouts increased their focus and productivity. It also didn’t take long to turn this experiment into a routine. Coworkers would encourage one another to take breaks and do a little physical activity before switching tasks. It’s been about 6 months now the group is still at it making sure they hit their pullup numbers for the day.

How to encourage exercise throughout the day

There are many simple ways that your organization can encourage physical activity throughout the workday to help improve employee satisfaction. Here are some great ideas to help you get your creative juices flowing:

Spearhead daily team walks
If you work in an office, be intentional about getting up and moving around every 30 minutes
Try some short, high intensity YouTube workouts
Take up walking, jogging, biking during lunch breaks
Start a push-up or pull-up club
Provide time during the day for employees to hit the gym
Subsidize local gym memberships

The key is to start simple and small. Foster a safe and encouraging environment and invite as many people as you can to participate. If you start an exercise club at your work, let us know how it goes @EAIncCanada.

What is a Spending Account?

Wed, 06 Mar 2019 11:04:40 Z

Have you heard any of the acronyms: HSA, PHSP, TSA, LSA, WSA, FSA (yikes)? Or the term "Health Spending Account"? In this article we'll explore what health related spending accounts are and the various types of spending accounts that exist.

Employee spending accounts are becoming quite common as a means of supplementing existing employee benefits plans. In simple terms, an employee spending account is a fixed amount of money made available to employees each year to spend on certain types of expenses. For the purposes of this article we’ll only be considering types of spending accounts that apply to health related expenses. But it is important to note that there are spending accounts that cover non-health related expenses such as computer equipment or safety gear.

Employee spending accounts are simple to set up, simple to maintain and provide a lot of value to employees. Employers define which expenses are eligible for reimbursement and the amount of money to place in the spending accounts for their employees each year. A spending account provider such as a spending account provider, third party administrator (TPA), or insurance carrier will then adjudicate claims submitted by employees for reimbursement.

In general this is how most spending accounts work, however there are various types of spending accounts that all work a bit differently from one another.

Types of Health Related Employee Spending Accounts

In general there are three main types of health related employee spending accounts:

Healthcare Spending Account
Taxable Spending Account
Flexible Spending Account

Health Spending Account (HSA)

A Health Spending Account is sometimes also referred to as a Health Care Spending Account (HCSA) or Private Health Spending Plan (PHSP). An HSA is the most common type of spending account and there are several good reasons for this.

An HSA can cover eligible expenses not covered through provincial healthcare or an employee’s existing group benefits plan, and covers a variety of health and dental benefits. Eligible expenses are governed by the Canada Income Tax Act and a list of eligible expenses can be found on this handy HSA expenses table. An HSA can also cover expenses and employee incurs beyond plan maximums or expenses relating to co-insurance or deductibles. The Canada Revenue Agency defines what expenses are eligible, and eligible expenses paid through an HSA are made tax free to employees. What’s more, employers can deduct their employees’ eligible HSA expenditures as a business expense.

Taxable Spending Account (TSA)

A Taxable Spending Account is sometimes also referred to as a Wellness Spending Account (WSA) or a Lifestyle Spending Account (LSA). As the name implies, unlike the tax-free HSA, a TSA is a taxable benefit that covers certain health related products and services that are outside the scope of an HSA.

Employers control what expenses can be claimed under a TSA by defining eligible expenses when the benefit is defined. TSAs act to supplement traditional group benefits coverage by adding coverage for expenses that an employee would normally need to personally pay for out of pocket.

Some example TSA eligible expenses might include:

Gym memberships
Personal training
Non-prescription medication
Sunglasses
etc.

Flexible Spending Account (FSA)

A Flexible Spending Account takes the concepts of an HSA and a TSA and blends them together. It is a benefit that allows an employee to choose how much of their total spending account allocation they would like to go into each type of spending account. For example, an employee could choose to place 60% of their eligible funds into an HSA and the other 40% into a TSA. Typically an employee is able to change their allocation annually.

In addition to splitting allocations up between an HSA and TSA, some flexible spending account providers facilitate the ability for an employer to permit employees to designate a portion of their flexible spending account funds to spend on RRSP contributions.

Carry Forwards

There are three common ways in which the funds available to an employee through their spending account can be managed:

Unused funds carry forward
Unclaimed expenses carry forward
No carry forward (use it or lose it)

Unused Funds Carry Forward

Any unused benefit amount that was newly allocated at the beginning of a benefit year can be carried forward into the next benefit year. If at the end of the benefit year the employee has not used all of the funds carried over from the previous benefit year, those funds are forfeit. The employee loses access to those unused funds and they are returned to the employer.

Unclaimed Expenses Carry Forward

Any unclaimed expenses that occurred during a benefit year can be carrier over into the next benefit year and reimbursed in that year. If the employee does not fully utilize their spending account in any given benefit year they forfeit the unused amount which is returned to the employer. Any unused benefit amount is not carried forward.

No Carry Forward (use it or lose it)

Neither unused funds nor unclaimed expenses can be carried forward. Any unused funds at the end of a benefit year are returned to the employer.

Funding Methods

Depending on the spending account provider, there are various ways in which spending account can be funded.

On demand
Monthly
Quarterly
Semi-annually
Annually

Typically the spending account provider will charge a small administration fee per transaction it processes. At the end of the benefit year, any unclaimed funds are returned to the employer.

Not all Spending Accounts are Created Equal

When deciding which spending account provider to use, here are a few questions that can help guide the process:

Does the provider offer the ability to define a flexible spending account?
Does the provider offer simple online employee enrollment?
For their flexible spending accounts, does the provider make annual employee allocations easy?
Does the provider offer simple mobile claims submission?
Does the provider offer robust reporting on spending account utilization?

How to Set Up a Spending Account

Talk to your advisor about what type of spending account will pair best with your employee group benefits objectives and best serve your plan members.

Eligible HSA Expenses List

Thu, 21 Feb 2019 22:19:54 Z

A Health Spending Account (HSA) is a group benefit that an employer can make available to its employees to cover eligible healthcare related expenses. Qualifying expenses are governed by the Canadian Income Tax Act. Need to know if an expense is covered?

Checkout this handy table of eligible HSA expenses.

HEALTH EXPENSE	ELIGIBLE?	REQUIRES PRESCRIPTION?
Acoustic coupler		Yes
Air conditioner, filter, cleaner, or purifier (for persons with severe chronic ailment, disease, or disorder)		Yes
Altered auditory feedback devices		Yes
Ambulance service		No
Artificial eye or limb		No
Assisted breathing devices		No
Athletic or fitness club fees
Attendant care expenses (including nursing homes, group homes, respite care)		No
Audible signal devices		Yes
Baby breathing monitor		Yes
Bathroom aids		Yes
Birth control devices (non-prescription)
Bliss symbol boards		Yes
Blood coagulation monitors		Yes
Blood pressure monitors
Bone conduction receiver		No
Bone marrow transplant		No
Braces for a limb		No
Braille note-taker devices		Yes
Braille printers, synthetic speech systems, large print-on-screen devices		Yes
Breast prosthesis		Yes
Cancer treatment		No
Catheters, catheter trays, tubing or other products		No
Certificates completed by medical professionals		No
Cochlear implant		No
Computer peripherals for the blind		Yes
Cosmetic surgery necessary for medical or reconstructive purposes		Yes
Crutches		No
Deaf-blind intervening services		No
Dental services		No
Dentures and dental implants		No
Devices or software to assist in read (for persons with severe learning disabilities or the blind)		Yes
Diapers or disposable briefs		No
Diaper services
Driveway access		No
Drugs and medical devices bought under Health Canada’s Special Access Program		No
Elastic support hose		Yes
Electrolysis		No
Electronic bone healing devices		Yes
Electronic speech synthesizers		Yes
Electrotherapy devices		Yes
Environment control system (computerized or electronic)		Yes
Extremity pump		Yes
Furnace replacement (due to severe chronic respiratory ailment or immune system disorder)		Yes
Gluten-free products for persons with celiac disease		Certificate required
Health plan premiums paid by an employer and not included in your income
Hearing aids		No
Heart monitoring devices		Yes
Hospital bed		Yes
Hospital services		No
Ileostomy and colostomy pads		No
Infusion pump		Yes
Injection pens (such as an insulin pen)		Yes
Insulin or substitutes		Yes
In vitro fertility program		No
Kidney machine (dialysis)		No
Laboratory procedures or services		Yes
Large print-on-screen devices		Yes
Laryngeal speaking aids		No
Laser eye surgery		No
Liver extract injections		Yes
Medical marijuana (cannabis)		No
Medical services provided by qualified medical practitioners		No
Medical services provided outside Canada		No
Medical tests (such as electrocardiographs, electrocardiograms, metabolism tests, radiological services or procedures, spinal fluid tests, stool examinations, sugar content tests, urine analysis, and x-ray services)		Yes
Moving expenses (for persons with severe and prolonged mobility impairment, or who lack normal physical development)		No
Needles and syringes		Yes
Note-taking services (for persons with mental or physical impairment)		Certificate required
Nurse		No
Optical scanners		Yes
Organic food
Organ transplant		No
Orthodontic work		No
Orthopedic shoes, boots, and inserts		Yes
Osteogenesis stimulator (inductive coupling)		Yes
Over-the-counter medications
Oxygen and oxygen tent		Yes
Oxygen concentrator		No
Pacemakers		Yes
Page-turner devices		Yes
Personalized therapy plan		Yes
Personal response systems such as Lifeline an Health Line Services
Phototherapy equipment		No
Power-operated guided chair		Yes
Power-operated lift or transportation equipment		Yes
Premiums paid to private health services plans		No
Pre-natal and post-natal treatments		No
Prescription drugs and medications		Yes
Pressure pulse therapy devices		Yes
Provincial and territorial plans
Reading services (for the blind or persons with severe learning disabilities)		Certificate required
Real-time captioning		No
Rehabilitative therapy		No
Renovation or construction expenses to improve access (for persons with severe and prolonged mobility impairment or lack normal physical development)		No
School for persons with a physical or mental impairment		Certificate required
Scooter		No
Service animals		No
Sign-language interpretation services		No
Spinal brace		No
Standing devices		Yes
Supplements and vitamins
Talking textbooks		Yes
Teletypewriters		Yes
Television closed caption decoders		Yes
Therapy		Yes
Travel expenses (less than 40km)
Travel expenses (at least 40 km one way)		No
Treatment centre (for persons addicted to drugs, alcohol, or gambling)		Certificate required
Truss for hernia		No
Tutoring services		Certificate required
Vaccines		Yes
Vehicle modification (for persons with mobility impairment)		Yes
Vision devices (including prescription glasses and contact lenses)		Yes
Visual or vibratory signaling device		Yes
Vitamin B12		Yes
Voice recognition software		Certificate required
Volume control feature (additional)		Yes
Walking aids		Yes
Water filter, cleaner, or purifier		Yes
Wheelchairs and wheelchair carriers		No
Whirlpool bath treatments		No
Wigs		Yes

This HSA expense list serves as a summary of eligible expenses and is not exhaustive. It is subject to changes made to the Canadian Income Tax Act. For more information on the terms and conditions that apply to the various eligible expenses check the CRA’s website or talk to your advisor or HSA provider.

Expense list last updated: February 22, 2019.

Meet Effortless Admin’s Newest Partner: HRWARE

Fri, 01 Feb 2019 22:02:48 Z

We are excited to announce that we have teamed up with HRWARE to integrate their Aperio HR platform with Effortless Admin. We at Effortless Admin take pride in our focus to be the best at what we do: Benefits. We are ecstatic to have a Canadian HR product partner that takes the same pride in their focus on Human Capital Management.

This integration will help take your HR product stack to the next level by pairing 2 of Canada’s most robust and complimentary HRIS platforms to reduce the workload and risks associated with duplicate data entry by automatically pulling data from HRWARE Aperio into Effortless Admin.

About HRWARE

HRWARE delivers innovative cloud-based HR technology solutions to simplify day-to-day HR management. With over 25 years in the HR tech space, we understand the present and future needs of HR technology better than most.

Aperio, a cloud-based Human Resource Management Solution is a giant step forward in HRWARE's pledge to deliver a truly disruptive HR Solution that makes managing people both easy and effective. We at HRWARE are committed to providing our clients with an exceptional "Position Based" Human Capital Management technology experience, backed by the certified HR professionals you can count on. In Q1 2019, HRWARE is adding a truly Canadian Payroll to its portfolio of solutions to help fellow Canadians businesses more easily manage their Payroll requirements, be they simple or complex.

What we Love About our Azure Cloud

Fri, 18 Jan 2019 21:13:54 Z

June 16, 2018 was a big day for the Effortless Admin platform. For the many advisors, plan administrators and employees that use the platform, this would have seemed liked any other day. But behind the scenes a significant change had occurred. This was the day that we retired our physical servers and embraced the robust and powerful cloud computing service created by Microsoft, and loved by countless tech giants… namely, Microsoft Azure.

Far before we decided to transition to Microsoft Azure we knew that cloud computing was the future of the Effortless Admin platform. Keeping up with the demands of our physical servers (hardware failures, upgrading hardware, adding servers, and so on) was challenging at best. Just ask any IT professional what it’s like to manage a physical server farm.

We knew that the right cloud computing environment would help us scale more efficiently and would free us from the nuisances that inherently come with physical servers. The big question was: Which cloud service is right for us? Given the importance of this decision, our engineers set aside countless hours to assess the various cloud computing services offered today, including Amazon AWS, Google Cloud, Microsoft Azure.

Our primary considerations included:

Security - This was the absolute number one priority!
Locality of servers - The servers and all data had to be located in a Canadian datacenter.
Performance - The new solution must deliver better performance than our current physical environment and there must be room to improve performance when needed.
Scalability - The time dedicated to expanding and maintaining our network was becoming a real problem. Whatever solution we went with had to make asset management a lot easier.
Subscription cost - We weren't looking to break the bank. Ideally our new cloud solution would not cost any more than our current physical solution.

After months of assessment and due diligence, we decided that Microsoft Azure was the best solution for our specific needs. The purpose of this article isn’t to put a stake in the ground and pontificate why our decision is “right” and why others are choosing the “wrong” service. Nope… you’ll have to do some more Googling if you are looking for an extensive pros-and-cons list. In our situation, however, Azure was the clear winner.

That said, it’s been about six months since we made the transition and we wanted to share what we really appreciate about our new environment. Here are just a few highlights…

Azure is serious about security

Security is, without a doubt, the most important consideration when you’re choosing a cloud computing environment, or any technology solution for that matter. In my opinion, performance, cost, ease of use, and any other metric you are using to gauge a solution all need to take a back seat to security. After all, what’s the point of adopting a new technology if you are putting yourself and your clients at risk?

Answer: there is none… it’s just a really bad idea.

Microsoft, Google and Amazon all have excellent security measures in place. However, Azure currently has the most security certifications out of all providers and they are constantly adding new certifications to maintain their title as the most secure cloud provider. They were the first major cloud provider to be compliant with ISO 27018, and they were the first (and remain the only) provider to be granted level 5 clearance by the Department of Defence for the purposes of national security.

The attention that Microsoft places on keeping their security certifications up-to-date gives us a lot of confidence that our environment is well protected.

Another major benefit with Azure is the many network protections that are included by default. One of the biggest current threats to platform stability are Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks. This is when a service is flooded with many more network requests than it can handle, which results in the service shutting down completely. We’ve all heard about DDoS attacks bringing down many major services in the recent news. Azure provides all of their customers with built in protection against DDoS attacks at the network level, often before any heavy traffic even gets to their servers.

Azure also offers fine grained control of private networks with network partitioning and firewalls. This has enabled us to precisely define network access and monitoring to be sure things are secure. And, Azure provides numerous methods of encryption allowing us to ensure that data is always encrypted in-transit and at-rest.

Robust Canadian data centers

Out of all cloud service providers, Microsoft offers the most regions worldwide. At the time of this article, Microsoft has two, full-featured Canadian data centers. For a Canadian administrator of employee benefits, using exclusively Canadian data centers is an absolute must.

What we really appreciate about the locality of Azure is that their Canadian data centers are not inferior to their American counterparts. We have never noticed important features being excluded from data centers north of the border.

Performance won’t be an issue

Azure has a reputation for being the backbone of many demanding, enterprise-level applications. This includes massive apps like Adobe’s Experience Cloud, Honeywell’s Lyric solution and Office 365, to name a few. There is no doubt that Azure will be able to keep up with our performance requirements.

Scaling is simple

One of the inherent features of cloud computing is the ability to dynamically change the resources in a deployed environment. This offers a major advantage over traditional (physical) server environments.

As a point of context… a year ago, to add a server to our physical server farm we would manually requisition the new server, wait for days for the physical server to be added to our network and then spend another day configuring the server. Whereas in our cloud environment, a server can be deployed within minutes by simply clicking a few buttons in a web interface. Now we have the ability to double our even triple the size of our environment with relative ease.

It’s salty

Along with the switch to Azure, we adopted SaltStack for automated machine configuration management. By using SaltStack’s intelligent IT automation toolset, deploying new assets is fully automated. For example, when we need to deploy a new front-end web server, we are able to use our Salt script in concert with the Azure API to (1) requisition the server, (2) encrypt hard drives, (3) update firewall rules, (4) deploy production code and (5) update the load balancer to include the server in the rotation. It’s beautiful, more agile, and it greatly reduces the risks involved with code deployment and configuration changes.

And by adopting SaltStack we open ourselves up to a world of opportunities, including orchestrating the deployment of resources based on real-time demand.

We’re saving money

Microsoft Azure’s per minute, pay-as-you-go model allows us to only pay for what we need, when we need it. This means that we can scale our servers down (and save money) when demand is low, such as late at night and on weekends, and then scale the servers back up when demand increases. We are also able to create standalone test and staging environments and only pay for them when they are in use.

Another major cost savings opportunity was the ability to track resource utilization by server and prevent waste by forecasting usage and scaling to match.

Before we made the switch, we used Microsoft Azure’s pricing calculator and estimated that we would save somewhere between 15% to 20% on our monthly hosting costs.

> We are pleased to say that we are getting all of the added power of a robust, secure cloud environment and yet we are saving 16.7% each month. Freaking awesome!

(Mis)perceptions of the State of Benefits Admin Technology

Thu, 20 Dec 2018 22:54:09 Z

We live in interesting times when it comes to insurance technology (insurtech). According to cbinsights.com, in the United States alone, more than $2.56 billion has been invested in insurtech startups in 2018! Huge investments are being made in projects and programs to change an industry that has been traditionally dominated by manual processes and paper. Benefits administration (benadmin) in particular is one area in which tech investment is long overdue. Over the past few years the Canadian market has seen new entrants into this space as companies try to catch the insurtech wave that is rolling over the industry.

In spite of all of this industry investment, employers seem to be largely unaware of the fact that benefits management technology exists in the Canadian market that is specifically designed to streamline their administration and lower management costs. In fact, according to a recent study performed by HUB International, “more than 3 of every 4 respondents indicate that they are planning to implement one or more cost management strategies in the near future” yet, “only 11% of respondents plan to implement a new, or improve an existing, benefits administration technology platform or software solution.”

Companies are keen on implementing cost management strategies yet very few are considering software solutions as a means of controlling costs. Why is this?

The Technology Gap

Benefits administration in Canada, whether performed directly with an insurance carrier, through a TPA or managed in house, has traditionally been low tech. Very low tech.

Nowadays, however, many software development companies have started to invest in benefits administration related technology.

HR software companies, for example, often deliver some form of benefits administration module that integrates with their larger HRIS platform. These benefits admin modules typically streamline certain basic processes, but leave a lot of administration challenges unaddressed. These modules are often the least robust components of the overall HRIS platform. They may serve simple scenarios well, but as the complexity of the plan offerings increase so does the manual work.

Anyone who has been involved in employee benefits administration knows that it can get complicated. Fast. Administration requirements can change depending on:

the funding model (ASO, insured, etc.),
the plan design types (traditional, flex, etc.)
the type of products chosen (life, health & dental, wellness, spending accounts, etc.),
the employer’s unique policy contract requirements,
unique insurance carrier requirements,
collective agreements,
the list goes on...

It’s no wonder that benefits administration is still largely manual.

Bridging the Technology Gap

“While HR professionals are open to using technology, they might not yet realize how much technology has evolved and how it could help them to reach their employee benefits goals” (HUB International 2018 Benefits Barometer Canada Study).

With the inherent complexities built into benefits administration, it’s no wonder employers don’t plan on implementing new benefits admin technology. As HUB shows, employers are unaware of, and honestly may not believe there are, benefits admin systems that can handle their administration requirements. But there are systems on the market that are purpose built to solve these very real administration challenges.

Systems such as (insert shameless plug here:) the Effortless Admin platform. Technology that is designed to:

Simplify complex and error prone administration processes and insurance carrier requirements
Reduce liability through integrated policy contract compliance
Support the various (and changing) products an employer may want to offer to their employees
Eliminate duplicate data entry through integrations with insurance carriers and HRIS/payroll systems
Eliminate unnecessary billing reconciliation
Adapt to the unique reporting requirements of employers
And much more...

As of now, most employers are unaware that there are solutions to their administration challenges. This lack of awareness has caused many employers to settle for suboptimal solutions. The implementation of quality benefits admin platforms can very quickly lead to real tangible cost savings and increased flexibility.

How Leading Benefits Administration Platforms can put You in Control of Your Data

Thu, 13 Dec 2018 23:05:42 Z

Administering employee group benefits plans directly with insurance carriers, or through many ben-admin modules in HRIS platforms, comes at a cost. Some obvious, like a lack of robust data compliance built into these systems, which results in liabilities in the way of plan member data errors. Some, less obvious but still significant, like: the lack of robust data retention.

Consider the following example:

Once a year, a company and its benefits advisor receives a renewal report from the plan carrier. The report will provide some usage figures on the plan and will set out next year’s premium rates for the plan. The company and advisor will only be able to review the figures set out in the report, and then decide whether to: accept the new rate, ask for a rate break, or go to the carrier market for a better rate. If the company changes carriers for the better rate, what then?

Data collection occurs in the carrier’s system, as does claims processing. The company is not in control of its data. The spillover effects from this problem are twofold:

The company can’t verify that the information in the carrier report is accurate.
The data history generated during the company’s plan will be lost if the company changes carriers.

In our example, the fact that the company does not control its data reduces its bargaining position when deciding whether to accept the new rate or consider a carrier change. But a carrier change is not a solution to the problem in the long term, and it comes with short term consequences too.

For example, following through on a carrier change requires the re-enrollment of the entire company with a new plan carrier, learning its admin system and technical guide, and working with a new customer service team. Also, and just as important, a carrier change means that the company will lose all of its eligibility and claims experience history from its current plan. What this means is that the company loses its ability to audit their data and mine it for trends and changes over time and across carrier changes. Taken together, the company’s options are to remain reliant on carrier data with the carrier that has its history, or to restart the cycle with a new carrier.

A leading benefits administration software and service provider will solve this problem.

Whether your company is a small business or an enterprise, using a leading ben-admin platform will permit you to keep your company’s plan member eligibility data across insurance carrier and provider changes. And a truly leading technology can also permit you to retain your company’s claims experience data, so that you can leverage it to ensure your data is reflected correctly in your carrier’s renewal reports. This puts you in control of your data and allows your company and advisor to leverage long term insights into your employee benefits program.

Long story short: Make sure your company is in control of its data.

Meet Effortless Admin’s Newest Partner: BambooHR

Fri, 30 Nov 2018 16:20:13 Z

We’re excited to announce that we’ve teamed up with BambooHR to help take your HR product stack to the next level. Integrating BambooHR with Effortless Admin reduces your workload and the risks associated with duplicate data entry by automatically pulling employee information from BambooHR into the Effortless Admin platform.

Are you already benefiting from effortless administration? Login and visit your integrations page for more information on how easy it is to setup the integration. Still on the fence? Talk to us about us about how we can streamline your benefits administration.

About BambooHR

Serving more than 12,000 customers and supporting more than 1.1 million employees in over 100 countries, BambooHR is the leading provider of tools that power the strategic evolution of HR in small and medium businesses. BambooHR's cloud-based system is an intuitive, affordable way for growing companies to track and manage essential employee information in a personalized Human Resources Information System (HRIS). With BambooHR, HR managers have more time for meaningful work, executives get accurate, timely reports and employees can self-service their time off using a convenient mobile app. To find out more, visit bamboohr.com or follow them on Twitter at @bamboohr.

How a TPA Increases Flexibility

Wed, 21 Nov 2018 23:04:19 Z

In previous articles we covered various third party administrator (TPA) topics including: what a TPA is, and how some TPAs can lower the cost of administration.

This article looks at how a TPA can streamline group benefits administration for your company while also giving your company the opportunity to offer best-in-class benefits to your employees.

Streamlined Admin

The most common way in which a TPA can increase flexibility is by offering a centralized, robust employee benefits administration system that consolidates the management of a number of benefit providers into one platform.

To understand the power of this offering, consider the following reality in the benefits administration world:

Employer admin departments typically spend the majority of their time working to keep up on day-to-day admin. In most cases, an employer will have a benefit plan supported by one insurance carrier. The employer will take on the administration of the plan, as described in the plan carrier’s long form technical administrative guide. Day-to-day administration of the plan, from enrollments, to coverage changes and terminations will be performed on the plan carrier’s admin system. This day to day admin will be a mix of paper-chasing, post-it note reminders, manual excel sheet updating, cross referencing the plan carrier’s technical guide, and data entry into the plan carrier’s admin system.

Insurance carriers cannot offer the best benefit product for each line of benefit. In the above scenario, some benefits provided by the plan carrier will be great, others not so much. The employer could look to another carrier for a specific benefit to improve the plan overall, but the admin team is already at capacity and adding a better benefit would mean doubling the admin team’s work, i.e. a second carrier admin system to learn and update, a second paper chase routine, and a second technical guide to learn and comply with. Adding a third carrier is likely impossible.

This is where TPAs can help. TPAs can improve flexibility by acting as a centralized administration and customer service hub for benefit packages made up of a mix of different carriers. From the company’s perspective, it gets access to more benefits without adding layers of work. Instead, the company is supported by the TPA, and the TPA’s administration services take care of the complexities in the background.

Best-in-class Benefits

To get best-in-class benefits, employers need to be free to choose the plan that suits them best. Employers need to be diligent when selecting a TPA not all multi-carrier plans guarantee freedom. In fact, a fixed TPA offering might as well be a carrier offering, even if there are several carriers supporting it because of the difference between the following types of multi-carrier plans:

Fixed Multi-Carrier - the same carriers always support the same benefits in the TPA’s offered plan. Yes it is multi carrier, but it is rigid. The employer does get the TPA benefit of streamlined administration, but does not get freedom to serve its employees in the best way possible.
Best-In-Class - a company knows what its employees’ needs are. A true best-in-class TPA offering allows the employer and its advisor to design a plan that works best for the company, and then go to market to get each carrier’s best offering for that plan. The outcome is that over time different carriers may offer different lines of benefit supporting the plan, all while the TPA manages these changes in the background as it provides the employer with consistent, streamlined administration.

Put simply, best-in-class means freedom to support your workforce with a dynamic benefits packages over time. It means the flexibility to make change without losing your administration system or the efficiencies of a TPA. It means being in control of your benefits plan, and your data.

How a TPA Lowers Administration Costs

Tue, 06 Nov 2018 22:22:07 Z

The true cost of an employee group benefits plan is more than the plan’s premium. The plan must be administered, and administration is a time consuming, inefficient, and costly part of employee benefits. Benefit plan admin is usually a process of never ending paper chasing for enrollments and other forms, while maintaining a wall of post-it note reminders of important dates as well as an excel sheet to cross reference against insurance company admin websites and invoices.

The inefficiencies of this process add up. For example, CFO.com estimates the following average day-to-day benefit plan admin costs:

$110 per employee enrollment
$13 per address change
$45 per salary change

These costs, while significant, are only small parts of the plan admin work, which also includes the monthly management of insurance company billing reconciliation and remittances.

Together, these costs add up to large, recurring expenses. This is especially true once you consider the fact that Canadian employers change benefit providers every 3-5 years on average, meaning that companies are re-enrolling all employees at $110.00 each two or three times every decade. (Not to mention the costs of marketing and quoting the company’s benefits package.)

There is a simple reason these costs are so high. Canadian HR departments have almost no choice but to work through the frustrating limitations of insurance carrier administration systems. These systems are often inefficient, and slow to change. As a result, a typical HR department will usually find a benefits plan supported by one insurance company to be an administrative challenge, and many companies have to pass on improving a benefit plan by adding additional benefit products from other providers simply because they can’t handle the extra admin burden.

Many significant liabilities likely exist in your benefit plan eligibility data. This is because insurance company systems require the HR professionals to manually make sure that data entered into them complies with the insurance company’s administration guide, instead of embedding the insurance company’s guide into the system to protect the users. This creates risk, and can result in careful HR professionals needing big delays for small changes. But in the end no one is perfect, and data entry errors happen from time to time, and insurance company systems aren’t built to catch these errors.

Read more about how the right TPA can reduce your liability here: The Liability Risks Hidden in Your Employee Benefits Data

Leveraging the right TPA can greatly reduce your administration efforts

Choosing the right Third Party Administration (TPA) platform can reduce administration costs and liability while increasing flexibility.

Using the right platform will reduce your organization’s day to day administration costs through built in administration process optimizations. Put simply, the right platform can end the paper-chase and eliminate the need for maintaining a wall of post-it notes or excel sheet reminders, and frees up HR teams to perform higher value work for the company. More specifically, a platform that can be used no matter what insurance company supports the benefits plan at a given time, and one that is designed make sure changes comply with current benefit plan rules, will save your company time and save money.

Common functions like enrollments, updates, and salary changes are supported by the platform to ensure compliance, reducing the time and cost of these tasks, while billing reconciliation can be largely reduced. Other common costs can be eliminated completely. Adding or changing insurance carriers can be performed with no administration effort on the part of your HR team. Carrier changes can often be seamlessly implemented no disruption to your HR team.

Look for a TPA that supports the ability to make employee changes right up to the last business day of the month at which time billings are automatically generated. This means no restrictions on when during a month you can change employee data which translates to little, if any, reconciliation. Not only that but the platform produces one consolidated bill regardless of the number of insurance carriers you leverage so you only have one bill to pay.

TPA’s are backed by support teams that provide your organization support in administration and your employees with advice on utilizing the benefits plan which serves to remove your HR/Administration team’s risk of providing false advice.

What is a Third Party Administrator (TPA)?

Wed, 24 Oct 2018 19:46:24 Z

For years, Third Party Administrators (TPAs) have been the norm in the United States. Their ability to knit together insurance carrier products to make best-in-class benefit packages while controlling costs, along with the administration and billing efficiencies they bring, have made them the obvious choice for managing employee group benefit plans.

Although TPAs have been around for a long time in Canada they have only recently started picking up steam. Traditionally, employers have gone direct to a single insurance carrier for their group benefits plans. As more sophisticated benefit offerings enter the Canadian market, the ability to piece together best-in-class employee group benefit solutions without increasing cost and complexity of plan administration has grown in importance. So how do you accomplish this? Enter the TPA.

Ok, so what does a Third Party Administrator (TPA) really do?

In its most basic form a TPA helps employers streamline and manage employee group benefit plans of any level of complexity. They take on the administration of your employee benefits plan and help to:

Lower your administration costs
Consolidate your management of all benefits into a single platform
Keep you in control of your data across carrier changes
Eliminate your billing reconciliation
Improve the accuracy and compliance of your data
Increase your plan design flexibility without increasing complexity

In conjunction with your benefits advisor, a TPA can:

Increase your access to the market
Help knit together best-in-class benefits
Leverage your data to assist your advisor in performing independent renewal audits
Provide your advisor with access to plan performance analytics

Now, not all TPAs are created equal, and not all TPAs offer the same set of services. When choosing a TPA it is important to ensure that they offer the platform and services that aligns well with your organization's unique needs. The right TPA will you save time and money and allow you to implement the right employee group benefits program for your organization.

What to look out for when choosing a TPA

TPAs come in all shapes and sizes.

Some TPAs perform both administration and claims adjudication. These TPAs use an insurance carrier in the background to insure risk and take over the function of paying claims. Other TPAs perform only administration and leave the claims adjudication to the insurance carrier thereby allowing you to work with the insurance carriers that are the best fit for your organization.

Some TPAs rely on largely manual process and third-party/outdated systems . Other TPAs have built efficient administration systems that are designed specifically for the Canadian market that take a lot of the manual effort of administration away.

These are just a few examples of some of the different services that TPAs offer.

Given the variety of services offered, here are a few questions to consider when evaluating a TPA:

How long have they been in business as a TPA?
Do they offer claims processing, or do the offer administration only?
Do they offer a modern multi-carrier administration platform?
What insurance carriers do they work with?
Do they offer demos of their platform?
Do they work with employee group benefit advisors?
What are their fees?
Will they work with you to streamline your administration processes?
Do they integrated with HRIS/payroll platforms?
Do they have a support team to assist your organization in the administration of your plan?

The Liability Risks Hidden in Your Employee Benefits Data

Wed, 26 Sep 2018 04:45:01 Z

Conference Board of Canada: "Employee benefits could not be more important to engagement and retention of an organization's workforce - or, in many cases, more misunderstood."

Administering even simple employee benefit plans can be complex and time consuming, and even simple administration errors or omissions can expose your organization to significant liability. These issues only get worse if you want to take advantage of leveraging multiple carriers in order to construct a best-in-class benefits plan.

Our research and experience finds that on average 14% of employee data administered directly with insurance carriers or through traditional third party administration providers has errors in it. These errors can be difficult to identify and can pose serious liabilities to your organization. For example, common errors include:

Missed enrollments resulting in no coverage and a possible reduction or denial of coverage when discovered
Missed terminations resulting in inappropriate plan utilization and the risk of increased rates
Incorrect disability benefit volumes which can result in millions of dollars of liability and associated legal fees
And many more...

Consider the following case study:

Mr. Bennet is a 35 year old male who was recently employed with ABC Company. Due to a simple administrative data entry error, he was not enrolled in the company benefits plan. A year later Mr. Bennet was in an accident and became disabled. His application for the long term disability benefit however, was denied.

At the time of his disability Mr. Bennet was earning $75,000 annually. If he remains disabled until the benefit termination age of 65 ABC Company may be liable up to a maximum of $1,500,750 in disability payout based on the benefit provisions in his policy.

This is only one of many examples of significant liabilities that can easily exist in your eligibility data.

Given the likelihood that many of these issues exist in your current benefit plan administration data...

How do you identify the types of issues that might exists?
How do you approach a data audit in a thorough way?
How do you prevent these liabilities from occurring in the future?

Performing a manual administration data audit is a big commitment and a time consuming process. Even with good processes in place this type of audit should be performed on a routine basis and quickly becomes too burdensome. However to do so manually, each line of benefit for each employee needs to be reviewed and confirmed by cross referencing the system data of the carrier supporting that line of benefit with the relevant provisions of that carrier’s administration guide and policy contract provisions for that line of benefit, and this information must also be compared against the company’s payroll and HRIS data to ensure proper class / division allocation and volume calculations.

So how can you stay on top of the integrity of your data in a way that doesn’t break the bank?

Effortless Admin specializes in performing benefits administration data audits that expose many of the contract compliance issues cited above. On average, we find that 14% of employees have some form of obvious inaccuracy in their data.

The majority of these data issues are corrected automatically when administering an employee benefits plan through the Effortless Admin platform due to its industry leading rules based architecture. Not only does this help improve the accuracy of employee data at the time of enrollment but it greatly improves data accuracy over time.

Going one step further and taking advantage of one of our payroll or HRIS integrations will also help reduce data transposition errors by removing any duplicate data entry required between your payroll/HRIS system and the Effortless Admin platform.

Talk to us about us about how we can help reduce your liability.

HR Tech Summit Debrief

Mon, 20 Aug 2018 04:28:08 Z

It’s been a busy couple of months since speaking at the 2018 HR Tech Summit in Toronto.

Our tech talk on Optimizing Employee Benefits in the Data Economy
was well attended and well received. We had a lot of great opportunities to connect with a wide variety organizations to discuss their benefits administration and data insight challenges.

The feedback we received was that most all in one HR, payroll and benefits administration platforms that exist in Canada either lack broad access to the insurance carrier market or offer weak benefits administration capabilities. There are so few solutions that robustly address the various challenges created by employee benefits administration that many HR professionals are resigned to time consuming and manual processes. This doesn’t need to be the case.

The Effortless Admin platform doesn’t try to be a jack of all trades. It is designed to provide standalone, carrier contract compliant, and easy to use employee benefits administration tools.

Choose the HRIS and payroll platforms that suits the unique needs of your organization and integrate them with the Effortless Admin platform to reduce time, cost, and liability.

Speaking of integrations, it was great to connect with various great HRIS and payroll companies in Canada. In particular, we enjoyed our time with BambooHR as we work together with them and their great platform on a turn-key integration. More to come on this in the coming months. ;)

If we don’t connect with you beforehand, we look forward to seeing you at the HR Tech Summit in 2019!

See you at the HR Tech Summit in Toronto

Mon, 11 Jun 2018 02:47:08 Z

We are pleased to announce that we are a gold sponsor of this year’s HR Tech Summit in Toronto on June 26 & 27, 2018.

Drop by our booth and say hello and make sure you join our Tech Talk at 1:35PM on Tuesday, June 26, 2018 on the tech talk stage. It’s on optimizing employee benefits in the data economy. You won’t want to miss it!

We hope to see you in Toronto!

Articles

A New Chapter: Effortless Admin is Moving!

A Move Four Decades in the Making

Purpose-Built for What's Next

We're Operational November 17

You're Always Welcome

Looking Forward

Admin Checkup: Evaluating Administration Models

Carrier Direct Admin

HRIS Benefits Module Admin

Third Party Administration (TPA)

Traditional TPA

Tech-Enabled TPA

Further Reading

Effortless Admin Featured on the Starting with One Podcast

Understanding Excess Coverage and Non-Evidence Maximums

How does benefit coverage work?

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Example 2: Basic Life Insurance

What exactly is an NEM?

What happens when more coverage is available to me?

Choosing to apply for the additional coverage

If approved

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What is Excess Coverage?

How do I apply for additional coverage?

What is the maximum amount of coverage that I can apply for?

How can I determine how much the additional coverage will cost me?

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What if I am declined for additional coverage?

2020 in Review

Remember 2018?

Fast Forward to Today

The Year of Digital Admin

Looking Ahead to 2021

Further Reading

Digitizing Employee Benefits Administration

Adapting processes to the future of work

Meaningful ben admin solutions

Employee Onboarding

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The solution highlights the problem

What if it existed?

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Coronavirus (COVID-19): Information and Links

Official COVID-19 Updates

Being Prepared as a Workplace

Group Benefits Considerations

Travel Benefits

Group Benefits Coverage Questions

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Why Platform Integrations are the Future of HR Tech

What is Best-in-Class in the HR Tech Space?

Achieving True Best-in-Class Solutions

What is our Best-In-Class solution?

Further Reading