At-a-Glance Summary: Basic benefits are no longer a competitive edge for staffing agencies, so this post explains how supplemental benefits can attract and retain top talent without adding cost burden.
Let’s cut to it – basic benefits don’t win talent anymore.
Probably not lately. Most likely it was the job itself, and the level of other benefits… And there’s a reason for that.
There was a time when offering health insurance was a powerful differentiator for staffing agencies – a competitive advantage that helped you stand out and attract top talent. But the Affordable Care Act fundamentally changed that. Now that government mandates require health insurance coverage, providing employee health insurance has become table stakes, rather than a strategic weapon. Every firm has to offer it, which means agencies are all starting from the same minimal essential care baseline.
The result? You’re stuck spending money on benefits that don’t differentiate you at all. You’ve got the cost burden without the competitive advantage.
So, here’s the real question: How do you stand out and become the employer of choice without creating an unsustainable financial burden?
Supplemental insurance may provide the answer you need.
Supplemental insurance augments the standard health coverage you’re already providing to your employees. Think of it as a safety net that catches what traditional health insurance plans don’t cover. While major medical insurance handles hospital bills and medical procedures, supplemental insurance provides direct cash payments to employees when specific events occur, like hospital admissions, emergency room visits, or even routine health coaching needs.
Here’s a simple example: an employee goes to the emergency room and ends up being admitted to the hospital for five days. Their medical insurance covers the hospital bills, but what about everything else? The meals their family has to grab on the go because they’re not home. The childcare they need to arrange. The lost wages if they’re hourly. Supplemental insurance provides cash payments that help cover these real-world expenses that major medical doesn’t touch.
Benefits continue to play a major role in employment decisions, especially in staffing. Yet many agencies face constraints in what they can offer their employees.
As Zachary Rogers, CEO of Live Life Healthy (LLH) – a leading supplemental benefit provider – points out: “While staffing companies often have limited options for employee benefits, adding supplemental coverage that fills the gaps in traditional health insurance delivers real value to workers and can make a meaningful difference in attracting and retaining talent.”
Supplemental insurance helps you:
And here’s a key advantage: supplemental insurance doesn’t add to your cost burden. Since it’s voluntary and employee-paid, you can offer a more robust benefits package without impacting your bottom line. Employees who see value in the coverage can opt in, and those costs are deducted directly from their paycheck, just as many employees choose to add extra hospitalization or accident coverage insurance.
You might be wondering: if supplemental insurance is so valuable, why partner with LLH specifically? What makes them different from other providers in the supplemental insurance space?
LLH is the nation’s leading supplemental benefit provider to staffing companies, serving hundreds of staffing clients across the country. Unlike traditional supplemental insurance providers that serve a broad market, LLH was built specifically with the staffing industry in mind. They understand the unique challenges you face – high employee turnover, variable work schedules, and the need for benefits that are both affordable and valuable to contingent workers.
Rather than forcing employees to navigate a complex cafeteria-style menu of options, LLH offers a pre-packaged suite of benefits in one simple enrollment. When an employee opts in, they get access to a wide range of coverage within a single package, making it straightforward for both you and your talent to understand and manage.
One of the biggest employee complaints about insurance? Complicated claims processes. LLH addresses this head-on with an intuitive mobile app and web portal that makes filing claims simple and accessible. Employees can handle everything from their phone, removing the friction that often prevents people from actually using their benefits.
Here’s where LLH really differentiates itself. As Rogers notes: “While other providers pass you around, we manage every part of the service ourselves. If you reach out six months or even two years into the program, you’re calling us and speaking directly to a member of our team.”
And all of LLH’s staff are located at their Birmingham, Alabama headquarters – no offshore call centers, no third-party intermediaries. When you or your employees call with questions, you’re talking to the LLH team that knows your account and can actually solve your problem.
Rogers emphasizes this commitment: “You’re always dealing directly with one of our staff; you’re not going through some third party or intermediary. For us, we seek to provide a top-end experience to the client, the company, as well as the insured members and their families.”
And this isn’t limited to one type of organization; the same pattern shows up in companies with a few hundred employees and national operations alike, reinforcing how reliably the program performs in real staffing environments.
Here’s where the real efficiency comes in. Traditionally, managing a supplemental insurance program has been a nightmare of manual processes. You’ll process payroll, stop, download the file upload it to your supplemental insurance provider. Then wait while your supplemental insurance provider measures eligibility and calculates deductions. Download that file. Upload it back into your system. Rerun payroll. Then process again and send yet another report to confirm deductions were taken.
It’s manual, time-consuming, error-prone, and requires you to repeatedly download and upload sensitive employee data, repeating security risks at every step.
LLH is designed to integrate seamlessly with your staffing software platform, Avionté. While other providers might offer supplemental insurance, they require you to work around your existing systems through manual processes. LLH was built to work with your technology, not against it–which is the real game-changer.
The integration between Avionté’s back office and LLH eliminates all those manual headaches. Here’s how it works:
When you’re processing payroll in Avionté, the system communicates with LLH in near real-time. LLH retrieves employee information, measures eligibility, and automatically adds the appropriate deductions–all while you’re still in the payroll process. When you’re done processing payroll, you have a complete payroll ready to go. Hit print, and you’re finished. LLH receives confirmation that deductions were taken, so there’s no need to send separate reports or remit additional files.
No manual downloads. No uploads. No security risks from moving files around. No reruns. Just seamless, secure processing that happens in the background while you work.
“The real advantage of the integration comes from removing all the manual work that’s historically made supplemental insurance a hassle. With the integration, LLH can measure eligibility and apply deductions in near real time while you’re running payroll – no stopping, no downloading files, no re-running anything. You just process payroll like you always do, and everything else happens behind the scenes. That’s what helps make this so powerful for staffing firms.”
Scott PoeschlSr Vice President, Avionté+
This integration represents another step in Avionté’s continued move away from manual file management. For over 20 years, Avionté has been developing software solutions that keep your operations efficient and your data secure on one core platform. The LLH integration is one more example of how our robust back office and API capabilities help you eliminate dangerous, error-driven manual processes while giving your employees the valuable benefits they actually want.
Supplemental insurance gives you a way to stand out without breaking the bank. It’s a benefit your employees will value; it supports your retention and recruitment efforts, and with the Avionté-LLH integration, it’s remarkably easy to manage.
Note: Because some staffing firms may realize tax savings from offering supplemental insurance, and there may be tax implications for employees as well, we recommend consulting with a tax professional to understand how this benefit might impact your specific situation and what advantages it could offer your firm. Avionté, and its software, is not a tax advisor, nor guarantee preventative measures on the way taxable earnings are entered or comply with your firm‘s or employees’ tax implications.
Ready to start the new year on the right foot, differentiate your agency, and give your employees something that truly matters? The integration launches in January 2026. Schedule a free consultation call today.
