Employee benefits are a driving factor for many parts of your business, such as containing health insurance costs, increasing employee satisfaction, and retaining talented individuals. The average cost of insuring an employee is roughly $14,000, making health benefits one of the most significant overhead expenses for employers. Therefore, an effort must be made to create an effective benefits plan within your organization. A well-designed employee benefits plan is key to maximizing the efficiency of your health care plan and attracting qualified employees.
This blog will provide you with step-by-step guidance in creating an effective benefits plan for your business.
Quick Glance Into Health Care Benefits
Let’s take a step back and define employee benefits. Employee benefits, also known as perks, are benefits provided in addition to salary through healthcare insurance agencies. Employee benefits include a wide range of perks such as medical insurance, overtime, vacation time, profit sharing, stock options, or retirement benefits.
It’s important to have an understanding of employee benefits in order to create an effective benefits plan. Investing in a strategic plan will show your team members that you care not only about their overall health, but also their future with the company. When employees feel taken care of by their employer, it will incentivize them to go above and beyond for the company. Both employee satisfaction and retention can increase drastically from an effective benefits plan. However, it’s crucial to keep in mind that you don’t just have to create a solid plan, but also communicate it effectively to your employees.
Step-By-Step Guide To An Effective Benefits Plan
To make the most of your health care plan, it’s necessary to have a solid benefits plan in place. However, approaching such an important aspect of your business is easier said than done. The following are 5 steps we’ve put together to help simplify the process.
Step 1: Define Goals
Like most parts of a company, outlining your goals and objectives is the first step. Clearly defining your objectives will help you pick the right benefits for your business and employees. Instead of just listing all the benefits you want to provide, you should instead focus on how these employee benefits will support your business strategy. Some questions to consider asking are:
- In what ways do I want to support my employees?
- What is the most important reason for providing benefits?
- How do I want to support my employees’ health?
- What is missing from our current plan which needs attention?
After answering these questions, it will be much easier to define your goals and objectives. Keep in mind that when you list your objectives, you should take into account your business size, specific industry, location, and employee needs. You should also set goals that are measurable to track the success of your employee benefits.
Step 2: Assess Your Team’s Needs
No employer knows the exact needs and desires of their workforce. Therefore, it’s important to carefully assess the needs and risks of your employee population. This step of the process is all about gathering the necessary information to recognize the benefits your employees need. There are a number of ways to gather this information, but one of the most effective ways is to have your employees fill out a Health Risk Assessment. This will allow you to gain insight into their health and well-being.
Other key data points to cover may include the general health status of your team. Are your employees relatively healthy and active? Does your employee population include lots of people with chronic conditions? Questions like these will help narrow down benefits and packages that your company may be interested in. Also, if you have a current benefits plan, review it to see if there are any unused benefits that may be taking away from other potential benefits.
Step 3: Set Your Budget
It would be great if every employer had the capability of purchasing the most expensive benefits package and calling it a day. Unfortunately, this is not a realistic outlook, and defining your budget will help determine which employee benefits you can provide.
For those with a current plan already in place, compare your current costs with the projected costs of your desired package. How much of a price increase, if one, are you willing to comfortably sustain? Incorporating your employee benefits plan into your company’s budget will help you answer this question. You don’t want to bite off more than you can chew, but you also don’t want employees to feel underappreciated.
For those creating a benefits plan for the very first time, estimate a benefits plan budget. Getting a few quotes from several different insurance agencies or benefits brokers will help you grasp your price range.
Step 4: Arrange Engagement Efforts
One of the largest flaws of employers is failing to set up engagement efforts for their employees and their benefits. This will allow your strategy to turn into an operating plan with specific initiatives to help reach your goals.
Employee engagement proves to be one of the biggest challenges to implementing an effective benefits plan. Emphasize the importance of your employee’s benefits, and incentivize them to use them to their maximum potential. Some tips for helping your employees engage with their benefits plan are:
- Educate them on the different packages and benefits available
- Encourage employees to utilize all aspects such as dental or vision, if provided
- Discuss employee benefits throughout the entire year, not just during open enrollment
- Talk about voluntary benefits that your employees may be interested in
No One Does Employee Benefits Like Alltrust Insurance
With employee benefits being one of the largest expenses for employers, you want to ensure an effective benefits plan is in place within your organization. However, the abundance of different benefits, packages, and routes you can take makes it difficult to know what works best for you.
That’s why at Alltrust Insurance, we make it our mission to help organizations with their employee benefits and save them a headache. No matter how large or small your business may be, our team of insurance experts can help you along every step of the way in creating and implementing an effective benefits plan strategy. For more information on the services we provide, please contact us today.
