Streamlined processes help busy HR team keep pace

PetIQ’s Total Rewards Director Rob Hamel found setting up their benefits program with Unum to be refreshingly easy. “It really was a partnership — almost like Unum was part of our HR department”, says Hamel. “That led to seamless work with our employees when they needed to go out on leave because we were able to lean on Unum as a partner.” Watch the story below.

In the growing pet care industry, PetIQ is a leading pet manufacturing and wellness company. They’re dedicated to helping pet parents care for their pets, but they know they also need to take care of their workforce. Hamel has worked with other vendors. “Most of them are very transactional, and just doing what they had to do to get the product out, and get the service done, kind of at a bare minimum,” says Hamel. 

Unum’s HR Connect solution integrates seamlessly with HRIS systems like ADP Workforce Now, which saves time and effort for PetIQ’s HR team. Before a new plan year’s open enrollment begins, Unum builds the plans and transfers them to ADP Workforce Now automatically — which meant Hamel and team did not have to manually build or edit their Unum benefit plans within ADP Workforce Now.

“One thing that surprised me was when we were adding the new dental program, which is our newest, there was nothing I had to do. I asked our ADP rep several times if there was anything he was missing because the process was just so seamless,” says Hamel.

In addition to employer-paid group coverages, PetIQ’s employees have a range of voluntary benefits to choose from so they can tailor their package to meet their unique needs. “The utilization is quite high across the board for the benefits,” says Hamel. “We have about half of the population on dental and then a mix of probably about 40% of people that take the voluntary benefits as well.”

Hamel says, “one of the great things about those benefits is the ability to pick and choose, depending on what you and/or your family needs. We offer short-term disability and long-term disability for income protection. We offer products like accident, illness, and hospitalization. So, the employee can pick and choose amongst those.”

PetIQ’s Benefits Specialist Melissa Merriman adds, “Unum helps us with our benefits tracking because we are using them for multiple products. Employees who are filing for short term disability are also probably filing for a leave of absence and so, we're able to direct them to one place to apply for those benefits. Then we're able to look in one spot for the status of those different claims and leaves. It makes everything really easy and it's accurate and up to date.”

Merriman adds, “the enrollment process with Unum within ADP Workforce Now is very seamless. Employees can enroll in benefits, and they're able to do evidence of insurability for life insurance right there [via an integrated single sign-on].”

“There's no additional paperwork that we need to send the employee and have them submit to Unum. It's done through ADP Workforce Now,” says Merriman. “They can pull the information on their end and they keep their files updated without us having to do anything.”

According to Merriman, “building our open enrollment profile in ADP Workforce Now with Unum was easy. Unum went in and built the plan for us. We didn't have to worry about making sure we were entering things correctly because Unum was doing it for us. We added our work site benefits last year and then again, this year we're doing dental benefits, and it's something that we don't have to worry about. So, it's a really easy process to have them come in and help during a very busy time.”

“Having Unum as our provider has really made it easier for us on a day-to-day basis just simply because their information is always up to date,” says Merriman. “We don't have to worry about things lagging when we're doing our billing. We don't have to worry about credits rolling over to the next month. Everything is up-to-date and accurate. And I think that's important because that's a lot of time that is saved on our end.”