15 Dec Employee Benefits Can Create Certainty in a time of Uncertainty
By Grant Dattilo
Alongside the usual business challenges, employers in 2021 must consider added uncertainties created by Covid-19, political and social unrest. Yet, rather than seeing these as threats to a business, employers can find in them new opportunities to create a positive work environment that signals stability and commitment to employees.
Group health insurance is the number one preferred employee benefit in survey after survey. Other non-cash employee health care benefits are especially attractive to current employees. Together, these are often the core decision points considered by prospective employees about whether to accept an offer of employment. The right strategy tells the workforce that employers care for them, and this will encourage employee commitment to business goals.
Employers know that an experienced workforce is one of the most valuable of all business assets. The challenges to retain quality long-term employees are always great – more so in this current environment. The reality is that many employees feel uneasy about their future given the mix of events over which they have no control, and that makes it the perfect time to plan a different, better employee health benefit strategy.
A re-tuned health benefit plan is a vital strategy to create certainty for a workforce. Employees want to see that employers are committed to protecting the workforce and their families. How to do this when inevitable insurance premium increases, added to already nearly unaffordable premiums, are just as certain as snow in International Falls each winter – that is the challenge. But challenges offer opportunities.
That is why so many employers are now taking a look at the BENIC Plan – Benefit Employees Not Insurance Companies.[i] This concept reduces insurance premiums and allows employers to plow those savings into highly-desirable employee benefits.
Compared with non-BENIC plans, the BENIC Plan offers:
- Employees to access richer, more comprehensive benefits.
- Reduced employee payroll deductions.
- Employees additional affordable options for themselves and their families.
The BENIC Plan makes it possible for employers to leverage reduced insurance premiums to fund desirable employee benefits. The most important outcome from implementing a BENIC Plan, however, is a renewed sense of certainty understood by employees, and a feature that is attractive during new employee interviews.
It follows that employers can create certainty during the uncertainties of 2021 with an affordable group insurance plan that offers employees more attractive, flexible benefits and mitigates against premium increases. We suggest the BENIC Plan.
[i] The BENIC Plan is a group insurance concept offered by Dattilo Consulting, Inc.
