How Kernersville Chrysler Dodge made CHOICE Arrangement work for employees and HR

Company Overview:

With clearer benefits education and responsive human support, the automotive retailer moved beyond a difficult first experience with individual coverage and gave employees more relevant choices without leaving HR to manage every policy question. 

Kernersville Chrysler Dodge serves customers in Kernersville, North Carolina. Its approximately 200 employees span different roles, ages, stages of life, and communities. As the company grew, a single group health plan became less able to meet the needs of its workforce. 

Challenge: One group plan did't serve the workforce

Kernersville's group health plan worked when most employees lived near the dealership. But as the company grew, more employees began commuting from surrounding towns and counties, some as far as 45 minutes away. 

One network could not meet everyone's needs. Employees struggled to find doctors and pediatricians who participated in the plan. For employees balancing work and family responsibilities, changing doctors was not a simple inconvenience. It could mean taking more time away from work or searching for new care in another community. 

Changing group carriers did not resolve the underlying problem. Rates continued to rise, but employees were still limited by the providers and coverage available through a single plan. 

Kernersville needed a benefits model that could support employees living in different communities, give people more flexibility around doctors and prescriptions, and provide the company with a contribution strategy it could plan around. 

A better benefits model exposed an administrator problem

Kernersville moved from group coverage to individual coverage through CHOICE Arrangement, formerly known as ICHRA. The model gave employees more control, but the company's first year did not go smoothly.

Employees were adjusting from one employer-selected plan to owning and managing individual policies. They were unsure where to take billing, carrier, and coverage questions, and they continued turning to HR for answers about policies HR did not administer.

The first administrator did not provide the education, communication, or back-end support Kernersville needed. Instead of building confidence in the new model, the experience left the HR team skeptical that it could work.

The problem was no longer whether employees should have more choice. It was whether Kernersville had the right partner to make that choice manageable.

Solution: Education and human support made choice usable

Kernersville chose Take Command after its first year with another administrator. The difference was not simply access to another platform. Take Command gave HR and employees clearer guidance, responsive communication, and knowledgeable people to call when unfamiliar issues arose.

Take Command helped the HR team understand enrollment paths such as Easy Enroll and Self Enroll, including the responsibilities that came with each option. With that knowledge, HR could better prepare employees before they selected coverage.

The enrollment experience also became easier to explain. HR received clearer, more user-friendly materials for onboarding and open enrollment. Employees could speak with Take Command representatives about their individual needs instead of expecting HR to interpret the details of different carriers and policies.

That support was especially important for questions involving provider networks, prescriptions, carrier differences, and location-specific details. A generic answer could not account for the difference between similarly named carriers in different states or providers in communities with the same name. Kernersville valued having a knowledgeable person who could ask follow-up questions and understand the context behind the request.

When HR encountered an unfamiliar issue, Take Command researched the situation, explained the next steps, and helped coordinate a resolution.