Cross-Border Employment with Gianna Ricciardi, Vita Assure

In this HRchat episode, we look at some key considerations for cross-border benefits plus the legacy left by the pandemic on cross-border teams.

Bill's guest this time is Gianna Ricciardi, Co-Founder and Practice Leader at Vita Assure, a company that specializes in employee benefits brokerage and consulting, group insurance plans, group retirement savings plans, benefits administration outsourcing, disability and ability management, wellness programs, chronic care management, prescription drug management, employee benefit communication programs, expatriate coverage, special risks, and executive benefits.

Gianna has worked with Finance, Human Resources and Payroll teams for almost 20 years, designing employee benefit packages that meet the evolving needs of the workforce.

Questions For Gianna Include:

• Tell us about the mission of Vita Assure and the HR problems it tries to address
• What is a PEO and what is Outsourced or Third-Party Employment?
• How can you legally employ workers across the border using a PEO?
• In respect to cross border benefits, what are some common considerations? For example, can you shed light on alignment of benefits with other geographies within organization, vs local markets?
• Can a foreign business with a small team in Canada get competitive benefits for these employees? 
• How can HR help employees understand the value of their plans? How can they better communicate the benefits?
• What are the risks in treating a worker as a contractor vs employee? What is the value of employing a worker vs treating them as a contractor? Talk about disadvantages of a PEO/EOR?
• What has been the lasting impact of pandemic on cross-border teams (e.g. working from home is more accepted/desired, focus on wellness in benefit packages)?
• 2022 has seen unprecedented challenges in attracting and retaining talent. Talent acquisition, engagement, retention, a focus on culture and DEI, hybrid, remote work, increased salaries and renewed benefits are all top of mind. You are going to speak at Talent Focus 2022: Work Trends. Tell us about your upcoming session and hoped-for learning outcomes.

We do our best to ensure editorial objectivity. The views and ideas shared by our guests and sponsors are entirely independent of The HR Gazette, HRchat Podcast, and Iceni Media Inc.

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:02

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Speaker 2: 0:22

Welcome to another episode of the HR ch show. I'm your host today, bill Banham. And in this episode, we're gonna look at some key considerations for cross-border benefits. Plus the legacy left by the pandemic on cross border teams. My guest this time is Gianna Ricky HARDI co-founder and practice leader at Vita Asure. A company that specializes in employee benefits, brokerage and consulting group insurance plans, group retirement, saving plans, benefits administration outsourcing disability and agility management, wellness programs, chronic care management, prescription drug management, employee benefit, communication programs, expatriate coverage, special risks, and executive benefits. Gianna has worked with finance, HR, and payroll teams for almost 20 years. Designing employee benefit packages that meet the evolving needs of the workforce. Gianna, welcome to the show today. Thanks

Speaker 3: 1:22

So much for having me bill.

Speaker 2: 1:24

So beyond my reintroduction there, why don't you start by taking a minute or two and telling our listeners all about yourself and your role over at Vita? Sure.

Speaker 3: 1:34

So at Vita sure. I'm practice leader and ultimately responsible for anything that's client facing and the quality of the work that we do, but I've really been lucky throughout my career to have quite a variety of experience. I've worked for a major insurance company here in Canada. I've worked for an international consulting firm and even been involved with regulatory bodies in terms of certifying and, uh, providing education for new Brook and, uh, group insurance. Um, I wrote a book manual to help those brokers. So some people might say I'm a little bit of a geek when it comes to benefit.

Speaker 2: 2:09

Okay, perfect. Now, why don't you tell our listeners, uh, a little bit about the mission of Vita Asure and some of the problems it tries to solve for leaders and HR pros?

Speaker 3: 2:20

So we started Vita Asure at a time where I felt that the insurance and benefits industry was getting a little bit stale. Um, and as brokers, it was kind of a lot of rinse and repeat, and I wanted to really show employers that you can get creative. There's a lot of new things that you can do, um, to modernize and revive benefits. And that's really our mission. And also we wanna encourage employers to look at their benefits from a total rewards, uh, standpoint. So to avoid putting all the different, you know, comp and benefit programs that they have into silos and really communicate their value prop as a whole.

Speaker 2: 3:02

Okay. Thank you. Now then let's just take a step back for a minute and define a couple of terms for any listeners out there who are not as familiar, perhaps you can share with them, what is a P and what is outsourced or third party employment?

Speaker 3: 3:19

So a PEO officially stands for professional employer organization. And often we say it's third party employment because legally the employees that you would hire would be paid through the, uh, the organization, the PEO this is a really interesting model for organizations that are looking to expand quickly into new markets. Um, there's a lot of advantages because, um, you know, there's a lot of logistics, legal and accounting work that goes into setting up in a new country. And, um, the POS really allow you to, just to move quickly, uh, when, when, when entering new markets.

Speaker 2: 4:01

Okay, thanks. And how can one legally employ workers then a across the, the border using a P?

Speaker 3: 4:08

Yeah. So the PO, because the PO is, is set up with their own registration numbers and payrolls, and the employees that you recruit and that you hire technically are not your employees. They're the employees of the PO. So, um, essentially it's, it's all legal, they're set up as employees, and it's very different than re hiring somebody as an independent contractor, because for example, you could technically, uh, operate in a new market and then hire an employee and pay them as an independent contractor, but they wouldn't be an employee, right. Where whereas with the P the PO is an organization on its own, and the employee would legally be employed by that PO, but working for you

Speaker 2: 4:51

In respect to cross border benefits, what are some of the common considerations here then? So for example, perhaps you can shed light on alignment of benefits with other geographies within organization versus local markets.

Speaker 3: 5:06

This is a great question, actually, the most common thing, or I should say that's asked of me, um, when working with clients from abroad is precisely that, so there's two issues. One, we wanna make sure that the benefits are competitive in the loca local market, but at the same time, they need to be aligned and competitive within other geographies that the organization operates in. And sometimes this can create a conflict, right? Because sometimes you can't do both. Um, but of course, I always encourage employers to think of kind of more the spirit of what they're trying to achieve instead of trying to be very literal about it. Um, and with a bit of thinking and creativity, we can always find that right balance between being competitive, locally and competitive within the organization. And sometimes that, that really means making some changes, but as long as those changes really reflect the culture and the spirit of what you're trying to, uh, to achieve.

Speaker 2: 6:08

Okay. Okay. Thank you very much. So can a foreign business with a small team in Canada get competitive benefits for those employees? Is it more of a challenge for a small organization compared to medium, to large size companies who have perhaps more resources

Speaker 3: 6:24

You might be surprised actually, that it's, um, quite easy to set up a benefit client in Canada and most insurance companies will start as of three employees. There's two major insurance companies in Canada actually start with two employees. And this is actually one of the biggest misconception for businesses entering Canada. And even for local businesses, few understand that you can actually get started up quite easily. Um, what's very unique in Canada as opposed to maybe some other markets is that even though each province is ultimately responsible for delivery of healthcare and their respective provinces, there's an overarching set of principles, uh, established by the federal government. So there's, it's quite uniform from one province to the other. And most of the insurance companies operate on a national level. So even if you have like one employee in Quebec, one in Ontario, and one in Vancouver, you can still set up a benefits plan regardless of where they're, they're located. And yes, it might be true that, you know, a much larger organization might have more options available to them. You can still set up something that's quite interesting, even though it's a much smaller group. So you, you don't ne necessarily need to go through, you know, sometimes companies looking to start up will try to join association plans or try to multiemployer groups, but you can actually get started even on your own.

Speaker 2: 7:52

Jenna, maybe you can now tell me how can HR help employees understand the value of their plans? How can they better communicate those benefits?

Speaker 3: 8:02

Definitely. So communication really is key and in adding value to the plans and, uh, a lot of times I'll, I'll be helping our organization. I'll, I'll really be surprised to see that, uh, the employees don't really know half of the things that are being offered to them, or they don't fully understand them. And sometimes the HR team themselves are not fully aware of what's being offered or how it works. So I would definitely encourage the HR teams or the benefits teams to, uh, really, um, fully understand what's being offered. And I would also encourage them to develop material in house to communicate it because a lot of the material that's offered by the insurance company or the vendors is full of jargon. Um, you know, sometimes that might not be the best way to communicate. So for sure, if you can just, um, develop some, one pagers or some materials, uh, to help communicate those benefit plans, uh, repeat<laugh>, you know, even if you do it once employees don't necessarily retain, it could be regular webinars, it could be little videos, capsules, it could be information on your in, um, and also again, avoid the silos. So if you're talking about your group insurance, you know, you could talk about your retirement plan. You could talk about other perks, try to mix and match and bring everything together, but definitely communicate. Communicate is, is key.

Speaker 2: 9:31

Excellent. Just like we're doing right now. Now, then, um, what, what are the risks in treating a worker as a, as a contractor versus an employee, and also perhaps you can, you can suggest what, what is the value of employing a worker versus treating them as a contractor? Talk to me a little bit about the, the disadvantages of a P and an EO R

Speaker 3: 9:53

So, I mean, in some situations using independent contractors versus employees could be interesting, um, for maybe, you know, based for cost or legal reasons, but specifically in respect to benefits, one of the complications of employing contractors is that it becomes very difficult to offer benefits, at least in the traditional sense. If, you know, sometimes employers will say, well, what can we do? Can we offer individual plans? Well, individual plans will be subject to medical underwriting. Not everybody might be eligible. The cost will be more, um, there'll be a lot more limitations, a lot more re restrictions. And let's say, you say, well, let's just give them a lump sum in, in the year of benefits. Well, you know, they're taxed on that. It's not as fiscally advantageous as having a benefits plan. Um, so definitely there's some, when it comes to wanting to offer benefits, if you feel that that's an important part of your compensation, it, it will definitely be much more difficult if you're hiring contractors versus employees. And in respect to POS actually, I mean, for sure POS have, have their advantages, but in respect to benefits, unfortunately, uh, you might lose some control. Um, particularly we were talking about alignment and, and, and competitive benefits before. Well, a lot of POS will have their own benefits package, which is great in terms of getting set up quickly, but you won't have your say in terms of, you know, what's offered often it's a one size fits all plan, or there might be option one, option two. Sometimes I've seen that those plans are way above market and sometimes, you know, there may be lagging, so it might not, uh, achieve the goals that you're looking to in respect to benefits. And sometimes the, you don't have little access to costs or really what's being offered, which makes it more difficult for you to engage in the communication process. Um, so I would say like a lot of clients that I have that started with the PO when they're growing and they're really increasing the amount of head con, they usually decide to move away eventually from the PO, just because there are benefits in having control over what's being offered and, uh, and how it's being offered for sure.

Speaker 2: 12:11

Okay. So what has been the lasting impact of the pandemic on cross border teams? So for example, working from home is much more accepted in, in the desired these days. Uh, there's a much bigger focus on wellness, of course, within benefits packages. Talk to us a little bit about that.

Speaker 3: 12:31

Definitely. So of course there's been lots of lingering impacts from the, from the pandemic, but work from home is definitely something that we're hearing about every day. And I find it interesting that, uh, before the pandemic many cross-border teams or, or organizations that had very small teams here in Canada, they were, they were already working remote. So this is something that existed way before the pandemic, but sometimes it was harder to recruit people in those types of roles. And now it's the opposite. Now people are actually looking for remote work because it's really had an impact on their work life balance. Well, for some it's, it's made it more flexible in terms of, uh, helping them meet also, uh, their family obligations. So definitely that's gonna be a plus in, in, in helping recruit. But again, going back to this whole concept of alignment, as we have more and more people from different geographies working side by side, on the same teams remotely, it's even more important to make sure that there's at least some sort of match between their compensation, whether that be pay or benefit, you know, imagine you're sitting next to somebody and they're like, oh, I got this paid by my benefits plan. And the other is saying, well, we don't have that. How come we don't have that? Right. So, um, for sure that's something that will have to be, uh, top of mind. And, and I think we'll have to think more about what that's gonna look like, and for sure wellness is key and that's not just cross, you know, local international everybody has, uh, is, is talking about that because it, the pandemic has really had an impact on everyone's mental health and, and, uh, work is, is the work environment is quite stressful. So how do we integrate work life balance into the benefits packages? Let's think about that. Let's not focus on, you know, what historically has been offered and, and think of some new approaches in terms of, of wellness. That's definitely gonna be, um, something that benefits team will have to focus on moving forward.

Speaker 2: 14:35

So 2022 has seen unprecedented challenges and attracting and retaining talent. We all know this, uh, talent acquisition, engagement, retention, a focus on culture and DEI hybrid, remote work, increased salaries and renewed benefits. These things are all top of mind, of course, and you are gonna be speaking at talent focus, 2022 work trends. Uh, and that's happening about a week as we record this today. Tell us about your upcoming session and some of the hoped for learning outcomes.

Speaker 3: 15:08

Yes, I'm, I'm looking forward to participating, uh, at the talent focus. I think some interesting findings will come out of this, but definitely I'm sure there'll be a lot of talk about culture. Um, I think more and more employees are looking to find organizations where there's a fit in terms of the culture, the values, and, um, you know, we've seen the market has really heated up in terms of trying to attract talent and organizations are, are throwing money. If, if I can say are, are really boosting the salaries, but at a certain point, I think that employees be willing to sacrifice some, some, some salaries for better conditions. Um, you know, uh, whether that be in terms of diversity, in terms of the environment, in terms of work life balance, in terms of other values that the organizations might have, um, definitely I'm, I'm looking to, I'm expecting to have a lot of talk surrounding culture and, um, how that will, uh, have an impact on, uh, the employer physician moving forward.

Speaker 2: 16:16

Okay, wonderful. And just finally for today, how can our listeners learn more and connect with you? Maybe that's through LinkedIn, maybe we wanna share your email address and such, and of course, how can they learn more about all the cool things happening over at Vita assure?

Speaker 3: 16:30

Well, we definitely encourage you to visit our website@vitaassure.com. And there's a blog there where we, we try to post, um, really interesting material about what's happening in the market in respect to employee benefits and other HR topics. And you can always find me on LinkedIn. Um, I'm quite active there. Feel free to send me a message or connect. I'm happy to, uh, talk to you about any questions you might have about the Canadian market or about benefits in general. And, uh, please don't be shy.

Speaker 2: 17:02

Perfect. Well, that just leads me to say four today. Gianna, thank you very much for being my guest on this episode of the HR chat show.

Speaker 3: 17:09

Thank you so much for having me. It was, uh, my pleasure

Speaker 2: 17:13

And listeners as always until next time, happy working.

Speaker 1: 17:18

Thanks for listening to this episode of V HR chat podcast. There are hundreds of conversations with business experts available for free on the HR Gazette website, apple, Spotify, and all the main platforms, and remember to like subscribe and follow us on social media.