As the employee benefits landscape grows increasingly complex, businesses turn to organizations like Crown Risk Management, LLC for help. Formed in 2005, Crown Risk helps employers navigate the changing landscape and develop robust, cost-effective, and compliant employee benefit programs, qualified retirement plans, and property and casualty programs. When the company sought an additional offering that would add value for clients and provide a competitive edge, Crown Risk chose to partner with Mineral.

“Employment law is complicated and always changing, so having a resource like Mineral available to our team and directly to our clients is essential,” says Nicole Pietrantoni, an Account Manager with Crown Risk. “We began looking for a service like this and found that Mineral provides the most complete offering at the best price.”

Empowering clients with comprehensive HR resources.

Crown Risk and its professional team have earned a reputation for providing accurate and timely employment-related answers for their clients. Pietrantoni and her colleagues often field calls from employers with questions about subjects including employment law, changing mandates, or retirement contributions.

“We are able to use the Mineral resources to provide fast, accurate answers to their questions,” explains Pietrantoni. “Also, many of our clients are logging into Mineral on their own, searching the database and finding their own answers, or even getting live help directly from the Mineral Experts™ for complex questions. As a result, we’ve seen a decrease in the number of routine questions we’re getting, giving us more time to focus on other services.”

Smart Employee Handbook gets rave reviews.

A valuable feature of Mineral among Crown Risk’s clients is the Smart Employee Handbook. Businesses of all sizes struggle to create and maintain employee handbooks. Mineral’s tool removes the employers’ burden of designing, researching, and updating the handbook. Several of Crown Risk’s clients use the Mineral Platform™ to create a free employee handbook, saving each company an average of $1,500. “It’s a lifesaver! We use it ourselves,” says Pietrantoni. “Plus, Mineral sends alerts when something changes that might require an update to the manual. Too often these documents are quickly out of date, so this is a valuable service to our clients and to us.”

Pietrantoni says clients would often seek Crown Risk’s help in creating the manuals, which is both time consuming and involves considerable research. “We’re always happy to help, but with Mineral, most of our clients can create a compliant handbook all on their own.”

Multi-state compliance made simple.

When New York state (and many others) began mandated workplace harassment training, Crown Risk was able to jump right in and help its clients meet compliance regulations. “There are hundreds of courses available through the Mineral Platform, including harassment training,” notes Pietrantoni. “We are able to offer the training to all of our clients, which saves from having to purchase and manage the curriculum themselves.”

To date, Crown Risk’s clients have completed well over 200 courses on a variety of topics, training that likely would have cost those businesses thousands. “Across all our clients, the savings add up to close to $30,000,” Pietrantoni adds. “And there’s more than just what you think of as typical HR-related training. For example, there are cybersecurity courses too.”

Benefits Document Creator creates efficiency.

HR professionals are all too familiar with the myriad of benefit documents required to manage benefit plans. While some may be fairly simple, others such as POP plan and wrap documents require a fair amount of time and research. The Mineral Platform streamlines this task for Crown Risk’s clients. “The Benefits Document Creator tool is powerful and easy to use,” says Pietrantoni. “These documents have to be accurate and with Mineral they are.”

A value add for clients.

Mineral is provided to Crown Risk’s clients as part of the company’s offering, and it continually earns positive feedback. Many of Crown Risk’s clients do not have an internal HR team or may have a single point person who also handles other tasks. For these companies, Mineral fills a vital role. Clients can access the HR Compliance Library to research their HR and compliance questions. Then, on the occasions they need additional, personalized help, a Mineral Expert certified HR professional is a phone call away.

“Our team has a solid understanding of benefits and employment law,” Pietrantoni says. “But as brokers, we cannot be experts in HR compliance, so when we have questions, we turn to Mineral. The fact that we operate in multiple states also adds to the complexity, so having a resource like the Mineral Platform is indispensable.”

As the coronavirus pandemic dramatically disrupted operations for Crown Risk’s clients, the Mineral Platform served as a reliable, trusted source for information regarding the changing laws and regulations. Employers were able to access webinars, training courses, and other resources that proved vital in ensuring they were working with the most current information.

Mineral “gets it right”.

As Crown Risk looks to scale its own business, the partnership with Mineral becomes essential to that growth. “We can grow our client base and service offerings without necessarily hiring additional staff,” says Pietrantoni. “The Mineral Platform empowers our clients and our own team to tackle HR projects and answer HR questions in less time and with less effort.”

She concludes, “Our clients love the Mineral Platform, and we do too. It’s extremely valuable to have such a breadth of readily available resources. Mineral provides the technology tools plus a team of HR experts that simplify HR and compliance, giving our clients the confidence, they’re doing right by their employees. Companies just can’t afford to get HR and compliance wrong, and Mineral gets it right.”