Outsourced HR Provides Excellent Employee Benefits
and Prevents Costly Mistakes

When a friend came to Marcy Prins and her husband, Jan, for help after an auto accident back in 1989, the Prins’ applied Jan’s training as a swim coach at the University of Hawaii to create a water-based program of physical therapy. It eased their friend’s pain and sent him back to work happier and healthier. 

In the years since then, the Prins’ have watched that humble beginning grow into a thriving rehabilitation business that has helped more than 4,000 patients recover from accidents, surgeries, or other debilitating injuries. Some of their most hopeful results come among those who suffer from the painful joints of arthritis.

“People seem to like it and it helps them get better,” said Marci Prins of their aquatherapy programs.

As the company grew to include seven employees, Prins knew she also had to respond to their needs.

“Our employees wanted a 401(k) plan,” said Prins.

She contacted the human resources administration provider, ALTRES.

“They have a good plan,” she said. “We’ve been very happy and have since found so many other things of value.”

ALTRES also negotiated with HMSA to keep the health plan rates for Prins Aquatherapy and its sister swim-instruction company, Swim Hawaii, from rising this year.

“For a small business that means so much,” she said. “When I’ve had troubles, they’ve gone out of their way to help me.” 

ALTRES also developed a customized employee handbook that far outpaced anything else Prins had seen.  But above and beyond, ALTRES offered Prins Aquatherapy’s employees a tuition reimbursement benefit available to anyone who wants to improve his or her professional training. This standard ALTRES benefit even covered part of the cost of Prins attending a marketing course in Florida.

“I don’t know of any other company that does that,” she said. “It’s pretty impressive.”

When Prins asked ALTRES to provide a little bit more in the employee health plan, they accommodated her request.

“They expanded their rules to give our employees what they wanted. I appreciate that.”

Giving people what they need and want has been a way of life Prins Aquatherapy for almost two decades. Working with patients as young as three and as old as 90, the water therapy program has eased suffering from work-related injuries, highway mishaps, sports injuries or even surgical discomfort after life-changing hip, knee and shoulder replacements. 

“We had never run a business,” said Prins, “and sometimes we would hire people to help us, and sometimes they didn’t know what they were doing.” 

Prins also discovered that trying to do all the paperwork for employee benefits herself could end up with costly mistakes. Not with ALTRES.

“It’s so wonderful to get someone who knows what they’re doing to help you do parts of the business you don’t know how to do,” she said. “The people at ALTRES are on top of it…. I feel a personal connection to them.”