People & HR

How to manage benefits enrollment as Construction and Contractor Founders

People & HRFor Construction and Contractor Founders3 apps11 steps~22 min to set up

Benefits enrollment for a 12-person framing crew means chasing paper. You're coordinating open enrollment windows with Paylocity or ADP while half your guys don't check email, two subs need a certificate of coverage for a job bid, and you genuinely don't know which employees have elected which plan until someone's at urgent care. There's no HR department. You're the HR department, between submittals and punch-list calls. Every November you spend a week sending the same enrollment reminder to the same four guys who haven't responded, manually logging elections in a spreadsheet, and hoping nothing falls through before the carrier deadline.

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People & HRFor Construction and Contractor Founders3 apps11 steps~22 min to set up

Outcome

What you'll set up

An automated enrollment-status tracker that pulls from Paylocity or ADP on a schedule and shows you — at a glance — who has elected, who hasn't responded, and how many days are left before the carrier deadline

A triage system for the enrollment-related emails piling up from your broker, the carrier, and your crew — prioritized, summarized, and ready to act on without reading every thread

A central reference for plan options, eligibility rules, and enrollment deadlines that any employee or foreman can search without calling you

The Starch recipe

Apps, data, and prompts

The combination of Starch apps, the data sources they pull from, and the prompts you use to drive them.

Apps used

Email Agent Knowledge Management Task Manager

Data sources & config

Starch syncs your Paylocity or ADP data on a schedule — employees, enrollment status, and benefits elections flow into Starch automatically. Gmail is connected as a scheduled-sync provider so the Email Agent reads your inbox in real time and drafts replies. Notion is connected as a scheduled-sync provider to back the Knowledge Management app. The Task Manager tracks enrollment follow-ups independently with no external sync required.

Prompts to copy

Monitor my inbox for any emails from our benefits broker or health insurance carrier during November open enrollment. Summarize each one in two sentences, flag anything with a deadline or action required, and draft a reply for anything that needs a response from me.

Build a benefits enrollment knowledge base for my crew. Include our three plan options with monthly premium costs per plan tier (employee only, employee + spouse, family), the enrollment deadline of November 15, how to log into the benefits portal, and who to call if they have questions. Make it searchable so any employee can find their answer without texting me.

Create a task for each of the 11 employees who need to complete open enrollment by November 15. Set P1 priority for anyone past the first reminder with no action. Alert me daily on who is still pending so I can follow up before the carrier cutoff.

Run these in Starch → or paste them into your favorite agent

Walkthrough

Step-by-step

1 Connect Paylocity or ADP as a scheduled-sync provider. Starch pulls your employee roster, current benefits elections, and enrollment status automatically — you don't need to export anything.

2 Connect Gmail as a scheduled-sync provider. Every email from your broker, carrier, or employees about open enrollment is now readable by the Email Agent.

3 Tell the Email Agent: 'Flag any email related to benefits, open enrollment, or insurance from November 1 through November 15. Summarize each flagged thread, identify any required action, and draft a reply.' Starch builds the filter and drafts.

4 Open Knowledge Management and prompt: 'Build a benefits reference page. Include plan names, monthly costs by coverage tier, enrollment portal URL, submission deadline, and broker contact info.' Paste your carrier's plan sheet in plain text and Starch structures it.

5 Add eligibility rules to the knowledge base: which employees are full-time W-2 and eligible, which are 1099 subs who are not, and what the waiting period is for new hires. This stops the same three questions from coming to you every year.

6 In Task Manager, create a parent task called 'Open Enrollment 2026' and add one subtask per employee who must elect. Set the due date to three days before the carrier deadline so you have buffer to chase stragglers.

7 Ask Starch: 'Each morning from November 1 to November 13, check which employees in my Paylocity roster have not yet completed benefits enrollment and update my Task Manager with their names at P1 priority.' Starch sets up the daily check using your synced Paylocity data.

8 For employees who don't check email — which for a construction crew is most of them — use the Email Agent to draft a text-ready version of the enrollment reminder that your foreman can paste into a group chat. Prompt: 'Draft a 3-sentence enrollment reminder written like a text message, not a corporate email, telling crew the deadline is November 15 and linking to the portal.'

9 When a sub asks for proof of coverage for a bid requirement, open the Knowledge Management app and prompt: 'Where do I find the certificate of insurance or benefits coverage documentation for a subcontractor?' The answer is there without a call to your broker.

10 After the enrollment window closes, prompt Starch: 'Summarize which employees elected each plan, total monthly employer premium cost across all elections, and flag anyone who missed the deadline and defaulted to last year's plan.' Use the Paylocity sync data to generate this in minutes instead of manually tallying a spreadsheet.

11 Archive the enrollment knowledge base page with the final plan costs and election summary so you have a reference when renewals come up next fall — or when a new hire asks what you offer.

See this running on Starch

Connect your tools, describe what you want, and the agent builds it. Closed beta is free.

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Worked example

November 2026 Open Enrollment — 11-Person Framing Crew

Sample numbers from a real run

Employees eligible for enrollment	11
Enrolled by Day 5 (no action needed)	6
Pending after first email reminder (P1 tasks flagged)	5
Enrolled after Task Manager follow-up by Day 10	4
Missed deadline — defaulted to prior year plan	1
Employer monthly premium total (9 employee-only, 2 family)	4,850
Hours spent on enrollment admin vs. prior year	3

In November 2025, enrollment took about 9 hours spread across two weeks — chasing the same guys, re-explaining the plans, sorting broker emails between field calls. In 2026, the Email Agent flagged every broker and carrier email within minutes, summarized the threads, and drafted replies. The knowledge base meant that when two guys texted asking which plan covered their kids, the foreman could just send them the link instead of relaying the question to you. By Day 5, six of eleven employees had enrolled. Task Manager surfaced the five pending as P1 items each morning. Four enrolled after a follow-up text drafted by the Email Agent. One missed the cutoff and defaulted to his prior year plan — Starch flagged this automatically so there was no surprise when the carrier sent the final roster. Total employer premium came out to $4,850 per month across the crew. The whole process took about 3 hours of your attention instead of 9, and nothing fell through because you had a daily checklist that updated itself.

Measurement

How you'll know it's working

Enrollment completion rate by carrier deadline (target: 100% or documented exceptions)

Days-to-enroll per employee after the open enrollment window opens

Employer monthly premium total vs. prior year (catches plan cost increases before they hit payroll)

Number of enrollment-related inbound emails requiring your direct response vs. handled by the agent

New hire benefits election completed within waiting period window (yes/no per hire)

Comparison

What this replaces

The other ways teams handle this today, and how the Starch version compares.

Paylocity or ADP native benefits module

Tracks elections inside the platform but doesn't send you a daily pending-employee list, doesn't triage your broker emails, and doesn't build a searchable crew reference — you still have to log in and manually check who's done.

Spreadsheet + calendar reminders

Free and familiar, but the spreadsheet doesn't update when Paylocity does, reminders don't know who's still pending, and there's no central place for crew to look up plan details without texting you.

Gusto or Rippling

Good all-in-one HR platforms for companies ready to switch payroll providers, but if you're already on Paylocity or ADP and don't want to migrate, you can connect those directly to Starch instead and skip the platform switch.

Benefits broker portal

Your broker's portal tracks elections on their end, but it doesn't talk to your task list, your inbox, or your crew — you're still the human bridge between the portal and your guys every open enrollment cycle.

On Starch RECOMMENDED

One platform — email agent, knowledge management, task manager all running on connected data. Setup in plain English; numbers stay current via scheduled syncs and live agent queries.

Try it on Starch →

FAQ

Frequently asked questions

Does Starch actually connect to Paylocity and ADP, or is that a future feature?

Both are live scheduled-sync providers today. Starch syncs your Paylocity or ADP employee and payroll data on a schedule — it's not a future thing. You connect it once from your Starch account and the data stays current automatically.

What if my crew doesn't use email? Half of them will never see an enrollment reminder in their inbox.

The Email Agent drafts the communication — you decide how to send it. You can ask Starch to write a text-message-length reminder your foreman can copy into a group chat, or paste into a WhatsApp thread. The agent handles the drafting; the delivery is on you, and that's honest.

I use a benefits broker. Will this replace them?

No. Starch organizes your inbox, tracks who has and hasn't enrolled, and builds a reference your crew can search. Your broker still owns the carrier relationship, plan negotiation, and compliance filings. Think of this as reducing the admin that currently falls on you between the broker and your crew.

My guys are 1099 subs, not W-2. Does any of this apply?

The enrollment tracking and Paylocity/ADP sync applies to your W-2 employees only — 1099 subs aren't enrolled in your group plan. But the Knowledge Management app is useful for storing sub-facing documentation like what coverage you require them to carry, where to submit their COIs, and what your lapse policy is. That's a different use case but equally worth building.

Is Starch SOC 2 certified? I'm cautious about connecting HR data.

Starch is not SOC 2 Type II certified today. That's worth knowing before you connect a system that holds employee benefits data. If your company has data-handling requirements that need SOC 2 compliance, that's an honest reason to wait or use Starch for the non-HR parts of this workflow.

Can Starch automatically enroll employees on my behalf — actually submit their elections to the carrier?

No. Starch tracks who has and hasn't enrolled, reminds you and your crew, and drafts communications. It doesn't submit elections to a carrier on an employee's behalf. Benefits elections require employee consent and carrier-specific submission, which stays with your broker's portal or your HR platform.

What happens to the knowledge base after open enrollment ends? Is it useful year-round?

Yes — you update it once a year when plans renew and it stays useful every time a new hire asks what benefits you offer, or when a current employee wants to know if their kid qualifies for coverage. It also stores your COI requirements for subs, your waiting periods for new hires, and any other HR reference material that currently lives in your head or a random Google Doc.