How a 300-person municipality gave employees real choice in their benefits — for the first time

An Alberta municipality with over 300 employees, including both unionized and non-unionized staff. A long-standing Hylton client of more than a decade, they had built a solid benefits foundation over the years — but their employees had never had meaningful choice in what that coverage looked like for them personally.

The municipality's employees felt the benefits plan didn't reflect what they actually needed. A single coverage level meant a 25-year-old and a 55-year-old with three dependants were locked into the same plan — same costs, same limits, same trade-offs. The employer wanted to change that.

Beyond choice, leadership wanted to address mental health more seriously. The existing plan had no EAP worth speaking of, and the conversation around employee wellness had outpaced what the plan could support. With both unionized and non-unionized employees in the mix, any new structure had to work for a genuinely diverse workforce.

We took the plan to market across several carriers and spent months — not weeks — modelling the pricing options before a single change was made. This kind of work doesn't yield to shortcuts: the right design for a self-funded, multi-group plan requires testing scenarios in detail before you can commit to anything.

• Full plan-to-market process across multiple carriers
• Tiered coverage levels with updated pricing and employee cost-sharing options
• Implementation of a new, full-service EAP
• New virtual care program for faster access to primary health services
• Second opinion platform added for complex medical decisions
• Employee election process — every employee chose their own coverage level
• Self-funded plan component designed for greater employer control over costs

Employees are significantly more satisfied. Having a choice — and the information to make it — changed how they relate to their benefits. The feedback since implementation has been positive in a way the old plan simply didn't generate.

The employer is getting more for their benefits spend. Virtual care and the second opinion platform have been adopted. The EAP is being used — for individual counselling and, critically, for crisis management situations where having that support in place made a real difference.

The plan costs more than it did before. That's deliberate: they're covering more. Comparing the old and new plans isn't apples to apples — it's a different plan designed for a different purpose. The municipality understands that, and so do their employees.