 And welcome to another edition of Business in Hawai'i. I'm Daelyn Yanagida, and we are broadcasting live from the ThinkTech studios in downtown Honolulu. If you want to tune in live, we are at www.thinktechhawaii.com. You can also sign up to get on our mailing list there as well. The theme of Business in Hawai'i is to bring you stories of local businesses by local people. And our guests share with us their journey to building successful businesses in our sometimes challenging business environment. In the ThinkTech studios today is Joni Tamayo-Wilson from Employee Benefit Consulting, LLC. Joni, welcome to the show. Thank you. I'm so excited to have you here. And I know that what you do is a little unknown, and a lot of people have a lot of questions. So Employee Benefit Consulting, what is that? Well, first of all, thank you for inviting me. I feel I'm very appreciative of this opportunity. Benefit Consulting is when we are talking to the employees about anything that they need to know about Employee Benefit. So there's some situations where employers are looking at finding out how to go about getting just medical insurance or even dental insurance on their plans, and also employees are trying to understand what does the medical benefit do for me, or what does another benefit like the dental or the life benefit do for me? So on our show, we talk to a lot of business owners, a lot of startup businesses, a lot of entrepreneurs, and they're piecing together all the little parts that they need to know about getting their business started, or maybe they're growing. So when would someone need a Benefit Consultant? Is it an individual thing? Is it for a certain size group? How does that go? Well, anytime a person wants to start a business, we would be there even from the startup. So basically, you can actually just give us a call anytime for startups to learn how to turn in all your paperwork into the state, understanding what are the mandated benefits that are needed when you start hiring employees. So that is another time when groups call us, or when a company is already established and they have employees already, and they may be wanting to enhance their employee benefit package. So they can call us at that time too, and we'll do a review of your employee benefits and see whether it is viable to get enhanced benefits for your employees as well as maybe looking at that to hire prospective employees. So say for example, I'm a startup business, I haven't built anything, say it's just me so far, I intend to hire some employees. What is your advice in terms of getting them started on an employee benefit? Well, I mean when you start off for an individual, depending on how soon you want to have employees with you, it'll start to be in stages. So then we can actually help sole proprietors or individuals go through all the paperwork in all the stages of what needs to be done to make sure you stay compliant as a sole proprietor with benefits. And then as you grow into adding employees, then we'll be there also with all the other paperwork and making sure you're compliant when you're hiring employees. I think what's wonderful is that you're there for the journey with a business owner from the startup and while they're growing. So you're scalable. And I think that's a wonderful relationship to build. I do know that a relationship with your broker is really important. Tell me about the business owner broker relationship. Well, I think it's more like over here, it's Ohana, of course. And when we're working or servicing or helping our clients, we consider ourselves part of your company. So we're almost like part of your HR or part of maybe you need some information on looking at prospective employees, like I said. So we develop our relationships from the very first time that you meet with us. And then we start to grow along with you. Any pain, any challenges that you may have, then we are there to research that for you and provide solutions, problem solving. So I know I might be stealing a little bit of your advice here, but as a startup, what are some of the triggers that I have to keep in mind as I'm starting my business and hiring employees? I mean, is there a magic number of employees and then I have to offer something? The state has certain laws about benefits. Right, so let's just start with- Free consulting. Okay, so if you first start as an individual, there's everything from filing your information for your company. And then the taxes, we would just make sure that you're understanding that there is taxes that need to be filed as well. But when you start to look at employees, and you want to start hiring employees, there are some Hawaii employer mandates that you need to offer to your employees. So the one of the mandates is the worker's compensation, of course. When you have employees, you're going to have to look into that. And that would be one factor. The other factor is what we call temporary disability insurance. And as soon as an employee starts from date of hire, then you need to have that, it's called TDI insurance. But then once you have your employees established, and they've been working for you for several weeks, they'll say that according to the mandate for the Prepaid Health Care Act for your medical benefits, if an employee works 20 plus hours or more per week or four consecutive weeks, then employers are mandated to offer medical coverage. So that's when you need to start looking into, if you already know that your employees are going to be working 20 plus hours or more, then you need to start looking into the different insurance carriers that are available here that are approved in the state of Hawaii that offer the medical insurance that you need to be offering to your employees. So is that what you help with? You do that legwork where you're calling the carriers and talking about starting up benefit plans? Yes. So depending on the size of the group, we have several carriers here that we go to get the quote or to get a proposal on their medical insurance, depending on the demographics of the employees. And so as a business owner, do I have any control over cost or... That's always going to be my concern. It's very challenging. It's very challenging for small employer groups and that's why we're here to kind of explain to them that because of these mandated benefits, the medical insurance has changed a lot in terms of premiums and rates over the years. And so for a small business, it is really going to be... You can't really have negotiation on the premium rates. So just for example, we turn in a quote to request from an insurance carrier for maybe five employees. And from that five employees, because it's a small business, they're going to take a look at the demographics, meaning the data births of the ages of all the employees. And from their insurance carriers, the medical insurance carriers will provide a quote based on those, and it is going to be based on age-based rates. So does it matter then what carrier I go to or...? No. Actually, it's more of a preference. You know, we have several insurance carriers here, but then it comes down to sometimes the employer's preference on who they want to go with. So I mean, everybody here knows the bigger insurance carriers like HMSA and Kaiser, and there's also UHA and HMAA. So at what point am I able to have some ability to negotiate a benefit rate? That would be more closer to 50 employees or more or even higher than that. And that's when employee benefit consulting can help with the negotiations going forward on the premium rates for renewal period every year. So the bigger you are as far as an employer group, the more you're able to negotiate the rates with the insurance carrier. Nice. So as a startup business owner, I need to make sure that I have workers' comp, compensation insurance, temporary disability insurance, and then of course, if I have employees who work over 20 hours a week, the medical insurance. Now, with the medical insurance, does that include, does it have to include certain things like mental coverage or...? Swish and reimbursement. I know, I wish. So again, depending on... That gives me a heart attack. Yeah, no, I know, I understand that too. But depending on the size of your group. Okay, so 50 and under, they are going to be offered, you have to offer medical, drug vision, and dental. And this kind of ties into, you know, you're complying with the Prepaid Health Care Act here in the state of Hawaii, but that also ties into the Affordable Care Act as a federal regimen. So that's for 50 and over? 50 and under. 50 and under, yeah. So the Affordable Care Act, I think that's on the mind of quite a few people, and I know that it's been called different things for the past few years. It's been called Obamacare, it's been called healthcare reform. And then of course, with the Trump administration wanting to overturn some of that, can you give us an update about where that is and if you have an opinion on where it's going, where it's going to end up? Well, first I can say that it has been, it just adds a little bit more, it's very interesting. To say the least. To say the least. You know, with the Affordable Care Act, what it does is it adds another dimension to looking at your medical coverage through employer groups. Like I said, we have the Prepaid Health Care Act here, which provides very rich benefit. And then because of the Affordable Care, or Obamacare that came on, then we're actually, our job is to look at them both, and we're actually looking at two different regulations and then finding out which one is the richer one. The most likely, a lot of it right now, is the Prepaid Health Care Act that is richer, but then there's certain laws in the Affordable Care Act that we need to be looking at too. Now, going forward every year ever since it started has been challenging again too, but what we've seen over the past is that they are trying to change certain areas of the Affordable Care Act, but really when it comes down to it for the Hawaiian employers, you know, we always go back to the Prepaid Health Care Act. For the future of the Affordable Care Act, I would say that it's more of just a wait and see because there's all these changes that wanna be introduced to the ACA, and then it's the actual really looking in the deep dive of when it becomes a final regulation. So there's gonna be gaps as it moves along, and then we're gonna have to compare it with the Prepaid to see where that all fits in. That sounds like it's gonna keep you very busy. Yes, very busy. I want to know all about employee benefit consulting LLC and of course how you found yourself in such a career, but before we do that, we're gonna take a quick break. So we will see you back right after that break. This is Business in Hawaii. Aloha, I'm Cynthia Sinclair. And I'm Tim Apachella. We are hosts here at Think Tech Hawaii, a digital media company serving the people of Hawaii. We provide a video platform for citizen journalists to raise public awareness in Hawaii. We are a Hawaii nonprofit that depends on the generosity of its supporters to keep on going. We'd be grateful if you'd go to thinktechhawaii.com and make a donation to support us now. Thanks so much. Thanks so much. Aloha and welcome to At the Crossroads. I'm your host, Tisha King. You can catch me every Wednesday, alive at five. I'll see you there. Welcome back to Business in Hawaii. Joining us today is consultant, Yoni Tamayo Wilson from EBC, Hawaii. Yoni. So many great tidbits for entrepreneurs, startup businesses, business owners to take away about some of the things that they have to do when they're starting to hire employees. My question for you is, how did you find yourself in this career? Is it something you go to school for? Do you choose to be a benefits consultant? How does that happen? Okay, so actually I started as an underwriter for a couple of the health insurance carriers here. I'm a numbers person, so I figured I can get into something like that, calculate the premium rates, look at the claims experience, look what the premiums came in, and then kind of calculate the loss ratio, then the rate calculations based on that, that's your premium rate. So that was pretty straightforward numbers. And then later on, I decided to move into the consulting side. And what I learned is that premium rate calculations are just one small segment of providing benefit to employers. I started listening to the employers and understanding the whole dynamics of how they're building their business, what are the challenges that they need to do. So it became more of understanding what is mandated that needs to be done for employer groups, and then also just expanding to see what else I can do to help employers make sure that they stay in business because of all of these mandates, because of all of the benefits that they need to offer, as well as looking at ways and solutions. So it's still problem solving, but ways and solutions to maintain their employee base. And so our thing is we're like a business to business company, and we want the employer groups to do what they need to do for their business. That's why they got into business in the first place. And so we would be the ones in the back office helping them understand how to move along with the employee benefits. And I find that, I have a passion for it now. I mean, it's really like I said, problem solving to find what they need to do, but then they just have to worry about getting their business up and going. Your strategic partner is what you are with the business to help them, to align to their goals because employee benefits is not just laws and regulations and what you have to provide, but you're mentioning enhanced benefits that really can build employee engagement, retention or a recruitment tool to attract great talent to your organizations, which is why I think what you do is such an amazing partnership between their broker and the business owner to help them align to their ultimate goals. Right, and I agree too. I mean, when you start to get to be a bigger business, you want to enhance your employee benefit package, right? And one of our other services that we do also is when we do the presentations for open enrollment, and open enrollment is when employees get a chance to change their benefits that they already have, and this is done once a year. What we like about doing open enrollment sessions is that, sure, you may have all these different medical insurance carriers, and sometimes the presentations you want to have is someone that's unbiased in presenting everything. And that's one of the best things to do when you're doing an open enrollment presentation is to provide all the information that you need to the employees on what they have with the company. But we kind of take it a little step further, and once we see what kind of benefits you have, then we kind of tell in the presentation how they all tie in. If you need your medical insurance, and then all of a sudden you're looking at that you have a supplemental product, like critical illness, how they all tie in, and what can we try and guide employees on maximizing their whole employee benefit package? So another value to me then as a business owner would be that you become a part of my team, of my brand, and then you're taking care of my employees by helping them to understand their benefits so that I don't have to fully understand them, and that you can go ahead and answer those questions. And especially since with medical benefits, it does become personal for a lot of folks who may be dealing with pre-existing conditions or what have you, which they may not feel comfortable talking to their boss about or their employer about. So at least there's you who they can have that conversation with. Yes, and we also open up our doors, and they can call us any time. So if there's any situations that they couldn't get a hold of an insurance carrier because they submitted a claim or something's wrong with their billing, whether it's employer or employee, we will be there to guide them along to make sure that the problem is solved. You have an amazing team at Employee Benefit Consulting, LOC. And I think we have a couple of pictures here of you and your partner. So your partner is? Michelle Rodriguez. Okay. And the both of you are here or? Well, Michelle is in Kauai. Nice. And I'm here in Oahu. And so ABC actually started with Ladra Eber in the 1980s. And Michelle and I, we have really expanded our services to be more, you know, to be a hands-on consultant with like I said, employers and employees, communicating all the benefits out there as well as any changes to benefits, compliance, and other issues that they may have with benefits. So I do know that there are a couple of other members of your team. And I think we have a picture of Mark here. Mark is well-known in the industry. Yes. We are very fortunate to have Mark Fukuhara. He started with us this year in 2019. And, you know, he is another strategic consultant that is highly respected. And he has brought, you know, a full experience and, you know, of his expertise. So it's a different thing. His expertise is unbelievable. Yeah. Unbelievable. And then, of course, you have yet another member of your team. So we have expanded, and this Jessica Mitchell, and she's our digital marketing manager and client service manager. Nice. So, you know, we've actually, you know, in addition to helping employers with their benefits, we have expanded to other services as technology is evolving to introducing clients and prospective clients to online benefit platforms, paperless management. So, you know, that's one thing that we are very passionate about is introducing the technology. Well, we've noticed a lot of employer groups. Everything is still paper-based. But as we move forward, technology is changing, and so we need to change along with it to bring all this information in the forefront of the employer groups to move them along as well. You know, I think another thing that goes hand in hand when you're talking to employees about their health benefits, of course, is something we call wellness. Yes. And that's, you know, taking care of the whole person. Of course. It's also beneficial to the business owner because you also need to try your best to manage some of that risk. And I do know that employee benefit consulting does a great job of putting out wellness programs. And I think we have a snapshot of something that went up on your social media, your hashtag EBC, makes Work Life Balance. Can you share a little bit about that? Our team really believes in Work Life Balance. Everyone works hard, but then everyone wants to play hard, or there's family that you want to be with. Communing time is challenging anywhere and everywhere. So that was one of our hashtags that we use in our Facebook posting. EBC makes Work Life Balance. And so we post information on anything that we believe will help you balance your life with work and even with personal life. So we just want to emphasize that as much as possible. There are numerous studies that show that happy people are healthier. They're more productive. And so I think it just, it makes so much sense to wrap up Work Life Balance to make sure that we're working hard, but we're playing hard and we're taking care of ourselves. Right. Any other ideas of trying to work on a Work Life Balance, whether it's working remotely, telecommuting, that's what we're really emphasizing because it just makes more sense nowadays, especially with the technology around. EBC also goes a long way to make sure they're balanced. And that is by giving back and doing a lot of community, getting involved in the community's sponsorships. And I think we have a couple of photos here. Why don't you share with us about this one? So Employee Benefit Consulting, we have been sponsoring some tennis events here in Hawaii for the past couple of years. And in fact, there's one of them is the night, Oahu Club night doubles, men's night doubles in June. Another one is the tennis championship of Honolulu. And then the one here, which was just put on there with the tennis fireball tennis, that was actually in one of the biggest tennis tournaments now here is called the Hawaii Open, which is in December. So we're getting ready for that. Oh, nice. And that's when the top 20 professional tennis players in the world come here to enjoy Hawaii, of course. But then they also get to play a match or a tennis match. Can I ask you, so are you playing? No, I'm just cheering them on and meeting them. But it's fun because then you know that they're engaged and then we're also engaged in the sports as well. And keeping people active, that makes for a healthy lifestyle. And finally, I also took a clip from your newsletter, which I'm sure is available to anyone who wants a newsletter from EBC Hawaii, but definitely promoting some of the community things that you do. Why don't you share with us? Sure. So the community care, in lieu of the four Christmas or holiday gifts, we've decided that we're gonna donate back. And this one here, the University of Hawaii with Gapsam, we donated to that fund for that. We've done that before, even last year, the year before we did another donation to another foundation. And then the picture over there was staying healthy, got involved, got my son involved. Yeah, we were at a king's run. So, yeah. I commend you for, of course, your business success, but you're bringing that back and sharing that with the community and promoting healthy lifestyles. I think it's just amazing the service that you offer to your clients and to anyone who is interested in learning about benefits. We do have about a minute or so left. I'd love for you to share with our viewers where they can find you, social media, websites, where can they find you? Where can they reach you, Joni? Okay, so we have our website, ebchawaii.com, and then we're also on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. So, check us out at ebchawaii. Awesome. Unfortunately, we are out of time, but I wanted to thank you so much for joining us. It's been such a pleasure to have you. I also want to thank the amazing production staff here in the studio for hosting us today. And if you would like to be a guest on our show, please feel free to email your information to shows at thinktechhawaii.com. Business in Hawaii airs every Thursday at 2 p.m., and we look forward to seeing you here next week.