Offering comprehensive benefits can have a tremendous impact on a collision shop’s employees’ well-being, which in turn positively affects the business.
Richie Seaberry, vice president of business development and enterprise portfolio manager at Decisively, was the first guest in the “Safety First: Prioritizing Health in the Workplace” series on The Collision Vision podcast, hosted by Cole Strandberg and driven by Autobody News.
He spoke about the connection between employee health, workplace performance, recruiting and retention, and why investing in benefits can be a game changer for collision repair businesses.
Buying Power in Numbers
Decisively is a national technology and brokerage insurance firm that can give individual collision shops the benefits buying power of a much larger group.
“We built this model that allows us to service these small- to medium-sized businesses and allow them to offer an employee benefits package that is more comprehensive, richer and more affordable than what they're able to do out there on their own,” Seaberry said.
Decisively has partnered with the Society of Collision Repair Specialists (SCRS), which collectively represents about 60,000 collision repair employees at shops of all sizes across the country. The collaboration allows SCRS to build a custom benefits solution, which is passed to its members and ultimately ends up in the hands of those shops’ employees.
“The whole goal, once again, is to allow independent collision centers the ability to compete with these large MSOs for talent,” Seaberry said.
Twenty years ago, collision shop owners would’ve said their employees just wanted more hours and more pay. Health insurance, paid time off and retirement savings plans weren’t offered. Today, most technicians -- or potential ones, coming out of high school and looking at career options -- want paid time off, benefits and a 401(k).
“Not only are you trying to compete for talent against MSOs and other independent collision centers, you're competing for talent from construction, hospitality, restaurants, all those different types of industries that have a similar core makeup of the type of workers that they're looking to attract,” Seaberry said.
Offering benefits helps attract and retain talent, and it’s mandated by the Affordable Care Act for any business with more than 50 employees.
But it also ties into what a lot of collision shop owners say they want to do: “’I want to take care of my guys. I want to give my guys the best possible health insurance solution that they can get,’” Seaberry said he hears frequently. But that is often limited by the owner’s budget.
“The importance of offering health insurance to your employees has gone from ‘nice to have’ to ‘have to have,’” Seaberry said, but at the same time, the cost to offer it has increased.
Decisively’s scale makes it more affordable for small business owners, and its technology makes it easier for shops to join SCRS’ plan and get employees enrolled.
Business Benefits of Offering Health Insurance
When an employee is dealing with a health issue -- whether their own or that of a child or spouse -- it’s not something they can just “set down” when they’re on the clock.
“When they're showing up to work…that is going to be going through their mind. And a lot of the times it's, well, how do I get this better?” Seaberry said.
The employee will look at what their employer is offering to help them through a likely expensive issue.
“So they're looking at their health care in a lens: this is what my employer is providing me. This is how my employer, whether it's true or not, feels about me,” Seaberry said. “Your employee benefits package is a cultural cornerstone that can be used for or against [you in] the employees’ court of opinion.”
The partnership between Decisively and SCRS takes the onus off a shop owner to become an “expert” on how to offer the best benefits package possible.
“We want independent collision centers to be able to offer something better than they're able to do out there on their own right now. And we want to make it easy, and we want to make it straightforward,” Seaberry said. “And that was really how the SCRS employee benefits program was born.”
Who is Offering Benefits Within the Collision Repair Industry?
In a survey last year, Decisively found about 15% to 20% of independent collision centers nationwide are offering an employee benefits package. Seaberry said that number is expected to grow to 30% to 35% over the next five years.
At a typical shop that does offer a benefits package, about 40% of employees are enrolled. Seaberry said enrolled employees, on average, stay with the same employer twice as long as those who are not.
Seaberry said one business owner said he had an employee of 25 years who told him he was being forced to to take a new job because it offered health benefits that covered specialized care for his son, who had autism. The owner had just started offering Decisively’s package, which covered the treatment, but the employee wasn’t yet aware.
“That employee was able to stay with the company, and they were able to access the $0 co-pay” for mental health care, which includes occupational therapy often used to treat autism, Seaberry said.
Seaberry said mental health care services are an oft-overlooked benefit in Decisively’s package.
“When everyone thinks about health insurance, they think broken limbs, urgent care, emergency room surgeries, medications,” Seaberry said.
Mental health care is just as important, he said. Decisively’s package fully covers substance abuse counseling, which can be prohibitively expensive even with other health care packages. Employees have been able to use that benefit to address a mental health issue they couldn’t afford to before.
“That's been a big deal,” Seaberry said. “That's been one of my favorite things that I've seen, that this program has made available to folks.”
Without health insurance, most people can’t afford treatment for major medical events, Seaberry said. They often use credit cards or don’t pay the bill at all, which negatively impacts their credit. This frequently leads to bankruptcy.
“A huge portion of the reason why Americans are going bankrupt today is because of health care costs and going through something that they can't afford,” Seaberry said.
A lot of what makes a health care plan “good” or “bad” is expected out-of-pocket costs. By choosing a good plan, employers are “not only protecting [employees’] health and their ability to show up to work, but you're protecting their ability to feed their families,” Seaberry said.
How to Participate in Decisively’s Plan
Employers need to first figure out how much they can afford to contribute toward offering benefits. “You have to take care of yourself and your business before you can begin to help your employees,” Seaberry said.
The Employee Benefits Program offered to SCRS members has “multiple products to choose from to fit the needs of the very diverse group of collision center owners that we have in this country,” Seaberry said.
The primary products focus on $0 co-pays for urgent care visits, mental health care, doctor’s appointments and generic drugs.
Cost per employee can vary greatly based on which state a shop is in. California and Texas are among the most expensive, while Georgia and the Carolinas are among the least.
“A lot of this has to do with demographics -- the healthiness of a population and also what the local and regional hospitals are charging,” Seaberry said. Decisively does a comprehensive underwriting process for all groups, to make sure they're priced appropriately.
Decisively has a team dedicated to answering enrolled employees’ questions by phone, email and chat, in multiple languages. It also has an online benefits administration platform that integrates into a company’s payroll platform.
To explore options to offer Decisively’s benefits to your employees, visit scrsbenefitscenter.decisely.com to get a quote with no obligation to join.
“Fourth quarter is here,” Seaberry said. “This is the time when people are thinking about this the most. So if you're ever looking to help improve your benefits package, get some relief on your overhead, come check us out.”
Abby Andrews