Managed Benefits · Staffing Agencies
A staffing agency runs benefits administration at a scale most companies never see: hundreds of variable-hour W-2 workers cycling through assignments, eligibility that has to be measured across placements, and continuation events every week. BEG Managed Benefits, powered by isolved, tracks it all while your broker keeps placing your coverage.
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The Staffing Benefits Problem
What Gets Handled
Your workforce is at client sites, not your branch. The Benefits Admin Software plan puts enrollment online where placed workers actually are: they compare plans on their phones, get AI-guided recommendations, and enroll without a recruiter mailing packets or chasing signatures. Life events run through self-service workflows, and deductions sync to payroll so a worker who changes plans mid-assignment sees the right paycheck the next week.
The Software + ACA Compliance plan is the heart of the staffing case. Lookback measurement runs continuously across every assignment: measurement periods, administrative periods, and stability periods applied consistently, hours aggregated under one employer record no matter how many client sites a worker touched. Breaks between assignments are evaluated under IRS break-in-service rules so a returning worker is classified correctly instead of restarted by default. Forms 1094-C and 1095-C are produced for you from hours that were tracked all year, not reconstructed at filing time from branch spreadsheets.
In staffing, coverage endings arrive constantly because assignments end constantly. Notices go out on the required timelines, elections and payment windows are tracked, and carrier records get updated without a branch admin owning a deadline calendar. COBRA and state continuation support is scoped exactly on your discovery call so the process matches your states and your headcount.
On the Fully Managed plan, a dedicated Managed Benefits Specialist runs open enrollment start to finish, processes the constant flow of adds, drops, and changes, and keeps carrier updates moving, while a Benefits Auditing Analyst checks your data for the errors a churning roster breeds: workers still on the invoice weeks after an assignment ended, elections that never reached the carrier, deduction mismatches. For an agency, dirty eligibility data is not a paperwork problem; it is margin leaking out of every placement.
How You Buy It
Benefits Admin Software puts enrollment online. Software + ACA Compliance adds cross-assignment eligibility tracking and Forms 1094-C and 1095-C. Fully Managed puts a dedicated specialist and auditing analyst on all of it. Full detail on the managed benefits overview.
Your monthly estimate on screen - no call required
High-volume weekly pay runs the bigger headache? That is managed payroll for staffing agencies; for co-employment policies and unemployment claims, see staffing agency HR outsourcing.
A Common Scenario
A worker takes a 6-week assignment at Client A, sits idle for two weeks, then starts a 10-week assignment at Client B, followed immediately by a third placement at Client C. Handled manually, each assignment looks like a fresh, short-term placement, none of them individually close to full-time. Tracked under one employer record, the hours tell a different story: averaged across the measurement period, that worker crosses the 130-hour-per-month line, and the two-week gap falls inside IRS break-in-service rules rather than resetting the clock. The agency owes an offer of coverage it would otherwise miss, and the miss would not surface until an IRS letter arrived referencing months already closed out.
Questions
Plan setup, online enrollment for internal staff and placed workers, ACA lookback measurement across assignments, Forms 1094-C and 1095-C produced for you, life-event changes, carrier updates, and COBRA support at assignment-end volume.
Hours from every assignment accumulate under one employer record. The system runs lookback measurement continuously, so an employee who averages full-time hours across three different client placements is flagged for an offer of coverage, with gaps between assignments handled under IRS break-in-service rules.
Generally yes. As the common-law employer of record, your agency counts placed workers when determining applicable-large-employer status and owes offers of coverage to those who qualify as full-time under IRS rules. That is why agencies hit ALE status faster than almost any business their revenue size.
No. Your broker keeps advising you and placing your coverage. BEG Managed Benefits handles the administration behind those plans: enrollment, eligibility data, changes, and compliance filings. Most brokers welcome it.
No. You stay the employer of record for your placed workers, exactly as today, and your plans stay yours. BEG Managed Benefits, powered by isolved, administers the benefits side while your agency runs the business.
A monthly per-employee cost far below an internal benefits hire, which typically runs $60K-$100K a year in salary and overhead before that person even has software to work in. Answer five questions in the estimate form and your monthly range appears on screen; exact pricing is confirmed on your discovery call.
The exposure runs backward, not just forward. If lookback measurement shows a worker averaged full-time hours across assignments and was never offered coverage, the IRS can assess a shared-responsibility penalty for the months that worker went without an offer, and that penalty stacks per employee under employer shared responsibility provisions. Continuous, cross-assignment hour tracking is what catches the crossover before a filing season does.
The COBRA clock starts at the qualifying event, an assignment ending that drops coverage, regardless of whether the agency expects to place that worker again. Election notices, the election window, and premium payment deadlines run on federal timelines: COBRA premiums are billed at up to 102% of the plan cost, commonly landing near $110/day of coverage lapse risk if elections and payments are not tracked cleanly. A new placement later starts a new eligibility clock; it does not reopen the old COBRA election.
No, affordability is measured against the employee’s household income or one of the IRS safe harbors (rate of pay, W-2, or federal poverty line), not against what a client is billed for the placement. Agencies with wide pay-rate bands across assignments still need a single, consistent affordability method applied agency-wide rather than calculated placement by placement.
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Your monthly estimate on screen - no call required
