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November 2006 — Vol. 84, No. 9
COVER STORY
More valuable member services
than ever
Access to expert information through our telephone consulting, seminars, on-site training and publications is just one of many services available to CBIA members.
Providing a wide array of products and services that offer outstanding value to members remains a top CBIA priority. We strive to be our members’ best source of expert information, help with workforce development, affordable employee benefits and cost savings through group purchasing.
This year we once again enhanced a number of existing products and services — for example, by adding a popular, lower-cost health benefit option for our smaller members. Here is an overview of the many services available to you.
Trusted information to help you run your business
As the state’s largest, most-respected business association, CBIA serves as a trusted source of expert business information. Our telephone consulting service, e-newsletters, Web site, conferences, programs, reports and publications give members the knowledge they need to succeed in today’s competitive marketplace.
Telephone consulting: Our free Call Us First! telephone consulting service lets you get quick answers to your business questions. Most of the calls we receive concern best-practices guidance on employee-relations management and human resources compliance. You can also call about taxes, environmental compliance, changes in the state’s energy marketplace and other business issues. Besides helping you, these calls alert us to your public-policy concerns, enabling us to be more effective advocates for government policies that support economic growth and job creation.
On the Web: Our Web site, cbia.com, keeps you informed about government issues affecting your business, as well as HR and safety news, insurance and employee benefits, the state and national economies, CBIA member discounts, and other association products and services.
Knowing what’s going on in government: When the General Assembly is in session, our “e-Alerts” give you instant information about proposed business legislation and let you and your employees e-mail legislators to express your views. We also keep you abreast of government actions through cbia.com; our General Assembly Report; the CBIA News; and events, conferences and meetings.
Effectively managing your human resources: Besides our telephone consulting and HR Web site, we give you many other ways to learn effective human resources practices.
This year we introduced a new Compensation & Benefits Series designed specifically for our small and midsize members. This six-course series teaches employees with HR responsibilities how to develop innovative, cost-effective employee reward programs. Among other topics, the courses covered base pay programs, executive compensation, and health and retirement benefits.
We also released a revamped Connecticut employer’s guide, Beyond Federal Law: Connecticut’s Regulation of the Workplace, and an updated guide on COBRA and state insurance continuation. Our biweekly Human Resources E-News and monthly Safety & Health E-News keep you up-to-date on trends, new laws, court cases and other essential workplace information. And our popular series of HR surveys give you current data on compensation, benefits and personnel practices in Connecticut.
You can also learn valuable strategies for HR and safety management at our conferences, workshops and seminars. For a list of programs, visit cbia.com.
Tracking business and economic trends: CBIA’s Research Department regularly polls Connecticut businesses to provide valuable data and other information on:
- Economic activity, including trends in production, sales, prices and hiring
- Outlooks for the state and national economies
- Companies’ challenges and the strategies they’re using to address them, with a special report on manufacturers
- Executives’ opinions on public policy issues such as workplace costs, taxes and economic development
Every year we also collectively inform thousands of businesspeople and many public officials through our economic conferences. Within the past year, we launched two new events focused on Fairfield County: one on “The Year Ahead” in December and the other on “Infrastructure Issues and Challenges” in May.
We also presented more than a dozen seminars on business financing alternatives, conducted in conjunction with the Business Development Corporation (BDC) of New England. The BDC works in partnership with banks and investors to put together financing packages beyond the scope of traditional financing.
Those new events joined our roster of annual conferences on the Connecticut economy, sales and use taxes, “Next Generation Manufacturing,” and energy.
Meeting your workforce needs
Knowing that our members’ future success will depend on the availability of a highly skilled, well-educated workforce, we place a very high priority on workforce development.
We help companies access and train skilled workers, upgrade the skills of their incumbent workers, and manage their human resources challenges. The CBIA Education Foundation also creates effective partnerships between the education and business communities in an effort to raise the educational bar for all students — the workforce of tomorrow.
Workforce training and consulting
Consulting services: Our staff and recommended business trainers and consultants provide expertise on HR and safety compliance, supervisory skills, technical skills, “lean” and Six Sigma process-improvement strategies, workforce planning and development, and obtaining training grant funding.
This year our LeanSigma Institute, in addition to being an authorized vendor for Connecticut Light & Power’s PRIME (Process Reengineering for Increased Manufacturing Efficiency) program, became registered as a “Lean Service Provider” for the Aerospace and Defense Initiative of the state Department of Economic and Community Development and the Connecticut Center for Advanced Technology.
Our human resources experts conduct on-site training for supervisors and managers of member companies. These training programs help members understand their compliance obligations under employment and safety laws and regulations. The programs, though, stress more than compliance. They also emphasize best practices that save money and foster positive employee relations, thereby helping avoid employment-related lawsuits and reducing the perceived need for more employment laws.
The most in-demand on-site programs cover sexual harassment prevention, employment law for supervisors, performance appraisals, and workplace drug and alcohol prevention.
Workforce development and training grants: The Education Foundation’s continued success in obtaining grant funding allows us to provide financial support that helps companies train their current and future employees.
For the past few years, for instance, we have used a U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) grant to increase the supply of highly skilled workers and scientists in the biomedical manufacturing, bioscience and pharmaceutical industries. The grant funding comes from fees paid to the DOL by employers that have found it necessary to bring in foreign professional workers under H-1B visas. Under contract to Capital Workforce Partners (the regional workforce investment board for Greater Hartford), our business-services representatives familiarize companies in the region with the employer services available through the Connecticut Works “One-Stop” centers. Those services include incumbent worker training and education, applicant screening, economic development assistance, and customized labor market information.
Educating our future workforce
Our members are deeply concerned about the workforce readiness of high school and college graduates. That’s why the CBIA Education Foundation continues to be a leader in developing effective relationships between the business and education communities, and initiating programs to give students the skills needed to succeed in the workplace. The foundation currently focuses on:
- Promoting manufacturing careers. We’re following up last spring’s “Manufacture Your Future: Careers Expo” with a DVD and related teacher materials that will be sent to schools.
- Encouraging high school students to take more-rigorous courses, through the Connecticut State Scholars program. After piloting the program in New Haven and Danbury public schools and a technical high school in Middletown, we now have grant funding to expand it into eight new technical high schools and Waterbury public schools. Through the program, businesspeople tell eighth-graders how the courses they take in school affect their future life and earnings.
- Helping the state improve schools to comply with the federal No Child Left Behind Act. We have been identifying “Vanguard Schools” that are outperforming their peers and can provide technical assistance on “best practices” to schools in need of improvement. We have also lined up corporate sponsors for the Vanguard Schools program and helped plan a Nov. 9 conference that will focus, among other things, on how to get more companies involved in supporting school improvement efforts.
- Providing work-based experiences for teachers. Our summer externships have allowed math, science and technology teachers to work at CBIA member companies on projects related to the subjects they teach. The teachers now include work-based learning projects in their classroom instruction.
Employee benefits
CBIA’s expanding array of health benefits and retirement savings products give your company and your employees access to a wide choice of benefits at affordable prices. And, with our lineup of ancillary insurance products — Medicare, dental, life, accidental death and dismemberment, and disability coverage — you can meet all of your group coverage needs through CBIA.
Health insurance
Health Connections: Our flagship insurance program for companies with three to 50
Brand-new, free service for Health Connections members:
Section 125 Premium Only Plan Service
CBIA’s new Section 125 Premium Only Plan Service (available in mid-November) will save money for our Health Connections members and their employees. When an employer sets up a Section 125 premium-only plan, employees’ premium contributions are paid on a pretax basis. That not only reduces employees’ taxable income but the employer’s payroll taxes as well.
To set up this kind of plan, the employer must complete a document, which CBIA will provide at no cost via our Web site. Employers have to pay up to $300 to purchase this document from other sources.
For more information, contact your insurance agent or call CBIA’s Tom Guerra at 860-244-1160. |
employees, Health Connections now provides two suites of plans: Health Connections and Health Connections 2 (HC2). Both offer the “Power of Choice” — giving covered employees the choice of several plans from four leading health insurance carriers — as well as competitive rates.
A program similar to the basic Health Connections suite is available for companies with 51 to 99 employees.
HC2 provides even lower-cost options than Health Connections, including plans compatible with health savings accounts (HSAs). We recommend three banking administrators for HSA accounts; two of them discount their programs for CBIA members, and the third has no fees at all.
Medicare: Last January we rolled out a new Medicare Supplement plan from Anthem that provides comprehensive medical coverage and prescription drug benefits at least as good as those available through Medicare Part D.
COBRA and State Continuation Administration Service: If your company is a Health Connections member, CBIA will handle all of your COBRA and state continuation administration at no additional cost.
Workers’ compensation insurance: The CBIA Workers’ Comp Program, available to members with certain manufacturing class codes, aims to lower and stabilize members’ workers’ compensation costs.
Other employee benefits
CBIA Retirement Plans: This program brings cost-effective qualified retirement programs to small and midsize businesses through specially priced ING group annuity contracts and independent third-party administrators.
Eyewear Savings Plan: Provided through EyeMed Vision Care, this popular plan gives participants discounts on eyeglasses, contact lenses and laser vision-correction surgery at a cost of only $12 a year per employee (including their dependents). Discounts on prescription safety glasses are also available through LensCrafters.
CBIA Home & Auto Insurance: This work-site-based program gives employees of participating companies special discounts on home, auto and other personal insurance through Travelers and Middlesex Mutual. For the employer, it’s a no-cost employee benefit. For employees, it provides savings on insurance and a convenient way to pay for it, through electronic funds transfer. CBIA administers the program and provides ongoing customer service.
Group purchasing and member discounts
CBIA Energy Connections: Member companies that use large amounts of natural gas or electricity can control their costs through our Internet-based market-monitoring and competitive-bidding system. And our our small and midsize members will be able to save through a new aggregation approach to electricity purchasing that will debut by the end of the year.
Member discounts: You now have access to greater savings, on more products and services than ever, through the new “Member Discounts” area of our Web site. The new site lets you benefit from vendor contracts negotiated by CBIA on hundreds of products and services, including office supplies, office equipment, paper, furniture, safety supplies and professional services such as pre-employment screening. You can also get steeply discounted job postings and resume searches at CareerBuilder.com.
As a member, you also enjoy special pricing for CBIA programs, publications, CDs and videos, which can be ordered through the CBIA Store at cbia.com or by phone, fax or e-mail.
Click for more information about CBIA member services, or call 860-244-1900.
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