A 100-Year-Old Business Lowers Healthcare Costs and Increases HR Efficiency

The Challenge

Rising healthcare premiums, an internal company human resources department departure, and getting lost in the shuffle of a major outsourced HR provider burdened the COO of a 100-year-old, medium-sized business with finding the ideal cost-effective, long-term solution for their family-owned organization.

The Backstory

White Plains, NY-based Wallauer Paint & Design has been in business for 99 years, spanning five generations of family ownership. With 120 employees across 16 locations, Wallauer’s is a thriving medium-sized business with human resources needs that have evolved alongside a century of changing legislation and business best practices.

The company had been using a large, well-known outsourced human resources provider for their payroll, healthcare, and benefits administration. However, as healthcare costs began to balloon for both employer and employees, the company sought a more cost-effective solution.

Additionally, Wallauer’s relied on a single in-house HR administrator to liaison with their third-party payroll/benefits partner. When that person left the company, the responsibility to not only solve the rising healthcare costs challenge but to find a new HR administrator fell squarely on the shoulders of the company COO.

Wallauer’s had three crucial needs:

• Implement a new healthcare benefits solution
• Fill the HR administrator position with a qualified new team member
• Transition away from their large-scale outsourced HR provider toward a partner that could provide more personalized attention

The Solution

After discussing their multi-faceted challenge with ExtensisHR, our team of HR and benefits experts developed a solution that would tackle their most pressing needs first.

An ExtensisHR recruiter identified and interviewed a series of qualified and interested applicants for Wallauer’s in-house Human Resources/Payroll coordinator position, helping Wallauer’s to hire an ideal candidate who would become a valuable asset during the upcoming transitions.

Next, by assessing the company’s healthcare cost and benefits, ExtensisHR was able to offer a healthcare package that reduced costs to staff members, lowered Wallauer’s premiums and eventually led to the company’s ability to extend coverage to more employees.

Transitioning away from their former payroll/HR provider was a seamless experience, as the ExtensisHR team established clear timelines and outlined explicit needs for documents and other information.

The ExtensisHR team trained Wallauer’s HR coordinator on our enterprise-level human resource information system (HRIS), which in turn offered a level of convenience and information access that was previously unavailable.

The company’s new HR/Payroll Coordinator summed up ExtensisHR’s technology offerings by saying, “I have worked on many payroll and HR systems, so I asked a lot of tough questions to the ExtensisHR team. Not only does the system conform to exactly what I need it to do, but storing all HR, payroll and recruiting information digitally, instead of in a filing cabinet, saves hours of time digging through paperwork.”

ExtensisHR PEO Services Provided

By partnering with a certified professional employer organization (PEO), Wallauer’s was able to reduce cost and increase efficiency on every aspect of their HR administration. Our solution involved a full-scope offering of our PEO services, including:

• Recruiting
• Payroll and tax services
• Support
• Benefits administration
• Employee time and attendance system

The Results

Within a few months, the leadership team at Wallauer’s could see ExtensisHR’s solutions were an effective fit for their needs. Not only were they able to achieve cost savings, ExtensisHR became a personalized, single point of contact to assist with every aspect of human resources administration.

• Employer healthcare premium costs reduced by ~$5k/ monthly This savings led to the ability to extend healthcare coverage to an additional 10% of team members
• Employees can perform basic HR-related tasks digitally through the ExtensisHR HRCloud app
• Due to the reduction in administrative busy-work, the Wallauer’s internal HR Coordinator is free to focus on updating and streamlining important aspects of the company’s human resources processes, such as standardizing job descriptions and hiring practices, employee handbook updates/distribution, and staff training

Interested in learning more? Explore ExtensisHR’s solutions for specialty retailers.