How can we help you?

The CIP Group offers complete employee benefit packages, through our numerous insurance carrier partners. The CIP Group is an independent insurance agent is not tied to any specific product or carrier, allowing us to create a benefit package that meets your employees needs and help to attract and retain members of your team.

Our Employee Benefit insurance products include:
Medical, Dental, Vision, Life, Long-Term Disability, Short-Term Disability, Private PFMLA, Executive Level Business Overhead, Key Person & Disability, Legal Benefits, Pet Insurance, Medicare Supplemental Coverage, and more!

Our service include:
Insurance Brokerage Consulting
Human Resources
COBRA
HRA, HSA and FSA Spending Account Administration
Background Investigations
Retirement Services

Leaving a PEO is not a simple process. It is crucial to have a partner(s) that understand the ins and outs of a PEO and being in the open market. A few areas that need to be closely monitored during a transition are: Taxes, 401(K), Payroll, Employee Benefits, Human Resources, Workers Compensation, COBRA.

Gone are the days of paper enrollments! CIP can help automate your benefit enrollments through online platforms. We can work with your current payroll/HRIS platform if you have capabilities of online enrollment (ADP WFN, Paylocity HRIS, iSolve, Rippling for example), or create an online benefit enrollment portal for you using our in-house Employee Navigator benefit enrollment system. CIP will do all of the heavy lifting of adding in benefit plans, contributions, online benefit summaries and employee demographics. Online enrollments are available for both new hires and open enrollment, making benefit administration easy and streamlined.

Nope! If you don’t currently use a payroll provider that has a online benefit enrollment system, CIP Group can create a stand-alone HRIS enrollment system through our in-house platform, Employee Navigator. HR users will have full access to employees enrollments, demographic information, ability to run real time reports and access to employee information at a few clicks of a mouse. Employees will have access to their benefit summaries, enrollments, payroll deduction costs and can update emergency or beneficiary contact information.

CIP has relationships with many payroll vendors and can offer you an introduction to their products and services. If you choose to move your payroll and want to integrate your benefits enrollments online, CIP will be a partner with you during the implementation process. CIP will build out all of your benefit plans online, while you focus on the payroll/time & attendance piece of implementation.

Through our partner relationships with payroll vendors, we have direct access to many specialized teams to help you through the implementation process. We are not tied to any payroll vendor, and are here as your partner to help you get your payroll to a new vendor up and running as quickly, and painless as possible!

Absolutely! CIP has a dedicated staff with an average of 10+ years employee benefit experience. Your dedicated account manager is your liaison between you and your insurance carriers. No question is to small for us to help with! You can view our account management team here.

CIP is independently owned. You will have direct access to our president, James McSweeney, at any time. We are a local company, right down the street from you in the Cambridge/Boston area.

Want to meet for coffee to talk about your employee benefit packages? We will be there to meet you in person!

Want to visit our office to meet our staff? We love guests! Please visit us at 799 Cambridge Street, Cambridge MA.

Have an off hours question, issue or problem? Use our rapid response email that directs out to several members of our team for real time answers and help at rapidreponse@askcip.com

CIP works closely with private plan providers to streamline administration as part of a short and long term disability insurance offering. These plans will often reduce costs, and improve employee experience by reducing lag time between claim and payment. And because the policies are integrated under one roof, administration is reduced.

CIP offers a complimentary compliance platform to all of our clients by virtue of your relationship with us. Sometimes though, you need more than that. We have several offerings designed for a white glove approach to building your organizational HR infrastructure. Reach out to us here for assistance.

All CIP clients are given access to our HR compliance platform, and our HR clients receive expanded access to additional services.

Employee handbooks are best practice, designed to mitigate risk by providing a company endorsed guidance to benefits and employment issues, with the added benefit of communicating the employer brand. Working with CIP, we can build your handbook and help keep your handbook current and compliant through standard reviews and check ins.

As the regulatory environment becomes more complex, the demands on small business increases. It can be difficult to be sure you’re informed and acting in compliance with these increased regulations when the environment changes so often. Depending on industry, hiring a dedicated HR manager can be an expense too far. Because of our customized approach to HR Services, we can act to support your existing HR team or act to support managers in lieu of an HR manager. We can help you be more creative in how you serve your employees and keep your company compliant.

Training takes many forms. Compliance training is best practice, and can be required depending on jurisdiction and industry. A professional development program can be a game changer in terms of productivity and employee retention. Our HR Services clients have access to online training for both professional development and compliance issues, and depending on need, we can build and develop in person bespoke training programs.

Performance management and progressive discipline are hallmarks of well run companies, with the goal of realigning employee performance to managerial performance expectations. The key is consistent application of performance metrics, company policy and management process. CIP HR Services can help train your managers and help administer a performance improvement plan.

The short answer is “yes” without violating Federal labor law according to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and you can even provide incentives as long as they’re not coercive, but there can be a downside as well. This answer may vary under state law though. Specifically, you have to engage the Americans with Disabilities Act interactive process if an employee reveals a medical reason for not being able to take the vaccine, and you have to make allowances for any firmly held religious beliefs. The EEOC suggests that it may be better practice to encourage employees to get vaccinated than requiring it. There are other considerations you should take into account as you consider whether to mandate vaccines; please reach out to CIP HR Services to discuss these considerations.

There are many voluntary benefits available to employers in the marketplace. CIP can help design a benefit package for you to include voluntary benefits. Employees get the added benefits and you get to offer a robust benefit package, at no additional cost.

You can offer voluntary benefits, including vision, disability, life, accident, cancer, hospital indemnity, and legal benefits through payroll deductions. Employees can elect as little or as many benefits that fit their needs.

Since CIP Group is an independent insurance agency we work with all major insurance carriers, including:

Medical Insurance
Blue Cross Blue Shield, ALLWays Healthcare, Tufts Health Care, Harvard Pilgrim Health Care, United, Aetna, and CIGNA.

We also partner with TPA’s for small group options, including Health Services Administrators, Small Business Service Bureau (SBSB), Retail Associations of Massachusetts (RAM), and the Massachusetts Health Connector.

Dental Insurance
Blue Cross Blue Shield, Delta Dental, Altus Dental, Principal Financial Group, Met Life, Guardian, and we can even help set-up a self-funded dental program through a Health Reimbursement Account.

Life/Disability Insurance
Principal Financial Group, Mutual of Omaha, Lincoln Financial, UNUM, Guardian, Standard, Reliance, Hartford, Colonial, Transamerica and many more.

Vision Insurance
Blue Cross Blue Shield Blue 2020, EyeMed, VSP and Principal Financial Group.

In order to obtain and retain talented employees it is imperative that employers offer a robust benefits package. Most companies want to give employees as much as possible without putting a financial strain on their company. CIP has a comprehensive tool that uses published industry data and client data, to help clients benchmark themselves verse their industry and their competition.

Employers must offer a High Deductible Health Plan (HDHP) in order for employees to be eligible for an HSA. Employees that enroll in a HDHP may be eligible to participate in an HSA. Not all medical plans with high deductibles are HSA qualified plans. Each insurance company has identified which plans are HSA qualified plans, meaning when you enroll in an HSA qualified plan you can also enroll in an HSA. These accounts typically are identified as “SAVER” or “HSA” plans, but check with your CIP Account Manager for clarification.

The CIP Group offers HSA’s through our own HSA account portal. You can view balances, submit claims and conduct transactions directly from your iPhone, Andriod, or computer. More information regarding our HSA account offering can be found here.

You can also find out more information here.

The answer to this question is, it depends. Company size comes in to account when determining if medicare is an option for active employees. Some insurance plans also offer medicare supplemental plans, if your company qualifies for them. Please reach out to us to discuss your specific needs and we can assess your medicare availability. Contact us here.