Voluntary benefits help small businesses think big
Originally posted August 18, 2014 by Rich Williams on https://ebn.benefitnews.com
On a typical Saturday, you may drop off your car with your trusted mechanic, stop by the hardware store for a few supplies, grab lunch at a local sandwich shop and pick up some groceries on the way home. Every day, we enjoy the products and services delivered by small businesses.
Small business is the engine that powers our economy. Of the nation’s private enterprises, only 2% employ 100 or more workers, and 90% employ no more than 20. Behind each small business is an owner who wears many hats and relies on employees to deliver their best work every day — there aren’t a lot of extra employees to pick up the slack if someone is sick, injured or leaving the company for good.
Recent economic times magnified bottom-line concerns of small business owners. Many who weathered the downturn did so with lean staffs willing to work harder and longer to keep the job. But as the economy improves, those hard-working employees are apt to look for opportunities with larger firms that offer richer benefits and better life balance. Benefits play an important role in this consideration; half of employees recently surveyed say benefits are an important reason they remain with their employer. Small business owners who don’t pay attention to benefits risk losing their best workers.
Smaller, but with similar concerns
Small companies experience all the employee retention and recruitment headaches that big employers do, but often without reserve resources and staff to help shoulder benefits responsibilities. Few have dedicated staff to assess current benefits and consider changes or additions employees desire; many don’t offer benefits beyond compensation. According to LIMRA, small firms that do offer benefits tend to give fewer choices than their larger counterparts. The benefits offered most often are coverage for medical (44%) and prescription drugs (40%). Only one in four small businesses surveyed offered dental or life insurance coverage.
But employees at small firms have the same life needs and concerns as big-firm workers. A survey of more than 1,000 small business employees conducted by Harris Poll on behalf of Colonial Life found that many more employees are concerned about retirement savings (50%) and financially surviving a temporary work disability (39%) than losing their jobs (33%).
Voluntary benefits: More choices, not higher costs
Without realizing the human resource cost, too many small businesses fail to offer employees access to the very choices that could nurture employee loyalty and tenure.Experts say that doesn’t have to be the case: With voluntary benefits, small business can — and many do — offer a wide range of benefits geared toward the unique company culture.
The key is keeping up with what employees want and need. Younger workers might not invest in a 401(k) retirement option, but they’re probably interested in a cafeteria plan that gives them flexibility to save for unexpected, big-ticket needs. Older workers are typically more keen to invest in disability and retirement savings opportunities. You can help your clients understand their employee demographics and make connections to the right benefit options.
Many small employers would like to offer or enhance existing benefits, but cite cost as a deterrent. The good news is the same employees who would like better benefits are also willing to pay for them. A 2014 Colonial Life-Harris Poll found employees at small firms are quite interested in additional, reasonably priced insurance benefits such as life, short-term disability, critical illness, accident and cancer coverage.
Voluntary benefits — personal insurance coverage workers can buy through employers at a lower rate than they could get on their own — are a great way for your clients to offer a range of competitive benefits without damaging the bottom line. The value for employees starts with group rates, and they gain extra points in the employee loyalty ledger for convenience with payroll deduction options. And that can translate into enhanced employee retention: Small business workers who are satisfied with their benefits are more likely to feel loyal to their company.
Expanded benefit choices, low cost, and convenience are three very big reasons for small employers to dive into voluntary benefits. If keeping top talent motivated and productive is important to your clients, then find out today how easy it is to offer the benefits those highly valued employees crave most.
HDHP Use Doubles for Nonprofits
Originally posted by Kathryn Mayer on https://www.benefitspro.com
For many nonprofits, just having traditional medical coverage is so 2009. Consumer-driven plans, like HDHPs, are the new rage.
According to a survey from benefits administration firm PPI Benefit Solutions, among nonprofits, the use of traditional medical plans has decreased from 96 percent in 2009 to 83.6 percent in 2013. Meanwhile, the use of high-deductible health plans has nearly doubled, increasing from 22 percent in 2009 to 43.5 percent in 2013.
PPI surveyed more than 250 small to mid-sized nonprofit organizations nationwide.
“Nonprofits are really struggling to maintain a comprehensive benefits package, and consumer-driven plans like HDHPs, health savings accounts and flexible spending accounts can be great, lower-cost options,” said Karen Greco, director of marketing for PPI Benefit Solutions. “The growth in these plan types, combined with the appeal of a predictable benefits budget, is also driving a lot of interest in alternative funding and enrollment solutions like defined contribution with an online marketplace that offers a wide array of product options.”
More nonprofits also are adding voluntary benefits, the report found. More employers, since 2012, are offering voluntary dental (offered by 20.3 percent of employers), life (49.7 percent), critical illness (9.6 percent), accident (34.5 percent) and transit reimbursements (24.3 percent) to their employees.
Other findings from the PPI report include:
Increased importance on automated benefits administration and enrollment: 77.2 percent of employers (up from 28.8 percent in 2012) consider benefits administration platforms to be very important and the 44.3 percent of employers (up from 9.6 percent in 2012) who believe employee self-service portals to be very important.
Help needed with understanding PPACA: 60.5 percent of nonprofits said they haven’t calculated the cost of compliance with regulations under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.
Brokers wanted? Nearly 85 percent of nonprofit employers said they’re committed to delivering health and welfare benefits to their employees but are “seeking solutions to help manage costs and improve employee engagement.”
Protecting the next generation of workers with voluntary benefits
Originally posted May 1, 2014 by Andrea Davis on https://ebn.benefitnews.com
As the Affordable Care Act continues to make its presence felt, and as employers look for new ways to control their health care costs and shift more of the responsibility for benefit decision-making on to employees, the role of voluntary benefits is changing. Once viewed as a nice-to-have benefit, some say voluntary benefits should now be advertised and heavily promoted to employees as an important component in their overall portfolio of benefits.
“It’s part of a trend sweeping the industry,” says Chris Hill, CEO of Spotlite, an online enrollment technology company. “This level of [benefits] engagement has never really been required before.”
Rewind a few years to benefit plans with low deductibles and rich benefits and “these supplemental products [were] less relevant,” he says. “Now you’re asking employees to meet a $2,500 or $5,000 deductible and they have to understand how the [health savings account] or [flexible spending account] works with that and why an accident plan, for example, may be complementary to the high deductible plan.”
Millennials in particular can benefit from education about voluntary benefits. While they may view themselves as invincible, they actually have a lot to protect. “They’re not really thinking about all those what-ifs, but probably more than any other generation, they have something to protect,” says Alison Daily, second vice president of clinical and vocational services at The Standard. “They’re very highly educated. A third of them have four-year college degrees, but that comes with a big price tag for them. The average millennial has $29,000 in student loan debt alone.”
And yet millennials are either unaware of voluntary benefits or reluctant to purchase them. Sixty-nine percent of employees age 25-29 don’t own any voluntary benefits, while 71% of those under age 25 don’t own any voluntary products, according to statistics from Eastbridge Consulting Group. Among older age groups, 60% of 45-49-year-olds own some type of voluntary product.
Still, there’s evidence that millenials value voluntary benefits and that the availability of these products may increase employees’ loyalty to the company. According to MetLife’s 12th Annual U.S. Employee Benefit Trends Study, 86% of Generation Y value having benefits personalized to meet their individual circumstances and age.
The challenges of engaging this tech-savvy group are well-known. Millennials have high expectations when it comes to technology and the overall online purchasing process. This is a group that “sends thousands of text messages on a monthly basis,” says Hill. “You’ve got to compete for their limited attention span so those communications need to be highly relevant.”
But for all the talk about how different Millennials are from other generations, Daily believes good communication resonates with everyone, regardless of age. “I think that maybe one of the mistakes people make, or confusion they have, is that the millennials are very different from their non-millennial peers,” she says. “They’re probably not as different as we think.”
Awareness vs. purchase
Still, there are tactics employers can use to better engage millennials in their voluntary benefits, starting with separating the process in their own minds between initial education and purchase.
“You have the initial communication about benefits – what the benefits are, here’s why you should care,” says Hill. Employers should strive for “concise messaging that drives an action and the action you want to drive upfront is getting the employee to learn about what’s offered to them,” he says.
He encourages employers to actively look at email open rates to get a better understanding of subject lines that resonate with millennials. “Relevant information, relevant subject lines, relevant email layouts, relevant electronic communications are going to drive that action,” he says.
Once employers are past that initial awareness phase and on to open enrollment, “you’re adhering to those same principles – how are we going to capture the attention of the user?” says Hill. “Here we actually want to drive decision making about the products.”
It’s that second sale – the actual purchase of voluntary benefits – that gets tricky with millennials, believes Hill, because they tend to say: “I don’t want to call somebody about this product. I want all the information online so I can make a decision. I don’t want to meet with someone or fill out a piece of paper.”
But when it comes to benefits, millennials’ reliance on technology and self-service might be overstated. Face-to-face meetings are still important, even for this generation, says The Standard’s Daily. “I think sometimes [employers] may be thinking it’s got to be glitzy, that they’ve got to text [millennials] or something like that, but really just sitting down with a millennial and going over what these benefits mean … I think it’s the cornerstone to helping them make the right decision.”
The Eastbridge data appear to back up Daily’s assertion. When asked which of several ways they prefer to learn about voluntary benefits, just over half (55%) of employees representing a spectrum of ages chose “speaking with someone in person.” Twenty-one percent, meanwhile, chose “on my own.”
Daily also emphasizes employers shouldn’t feel they have to do all this communication on their own. In fact, she recommends they turn to their benefit brokers and carriers first, before starting any kind of communication program about voluntary. Another tactic, she says, is using peer-to-peer discussions.
“The millennial generation really values recommendations. If you think about looking for a new restaurant you think about Yelp, and the same thing applies to deciding to select disability coverage,” she says. “They’re going to look to their peers to help them make that decision, so having real stories about why colleagues chose to enroll in a benefit may be just what that millennial needs to make that decision to enroll.”
In addition, employers can leverage other successful communication campaigns. “Employers should really think about anything they’ve already done where they successfully communicated to employees and leverage that strategy,” says Daily. “I would look to the leaders of that event and say: ‘What did you do and why did it work?’ Employers may already have some of the skills and they just aren’t thinking about it in that way.”
And while it might seem like a no-brainer, an online enrollment system that facilitates a seamless shopping experience is important for millennials and all employees, for that matter. Not only that, but a mobile site that’s easy to navigate whether employees are using their laptop, iPhone, iPad or Android device.
“If I get an email from Amazon promoting a product I really want and I click on that email and then go on a wild goose chase to find that product, you’re going to lose users and buyers,” says Hill, who also cautions that all the benefit communication in the world is for naught if the buying experience isn’t simple. “If I do a great job communicating these benefits to millennials and then they have to go on to a system that looks like it was built in 1995, and the initial communications are very different than the actual purchase experience, we think that’s really bad. You’re going to lose millennials, who are used to things being easy.”
Among Spotlite’s clients, about 15% of employees use a mobile device to shop for benefits. As mobile devices and smartphones get more sophisticated and make inroads among older generations, Hill only expects this to grow. “Mobile is necessary. It’s something you have to have,” he says. “Enrollment needs to be easy for the end user. So you make it easy by offering it on a computer or a mobile device. It’s a necessary access point for individuals.”
Are employees more satisfied than ever with their benefits?
Originally posted March 17, 2014 by Andy Stonehouse on https://ebn.benefitnews.com
Despite some sense of grumbling out in the working world about the shape of benefits in the midst of further ACA rollouts, one new study suggests employee satisfaction regarding their benefits is at an all-time high.
MetLife’s 12th annual U.S. Employee Benefit Trends Study, released Monday, shows what researchers suggest is a tremendous level of overall satisfaction with workplace benefits – with some of the highest numbers in more than a decade.
According to this year’s study, the overall satisfaction level hit 50%, the most solid self-evaluation of benefits in the MetLife research’s history.
And while voluntary benefits strategies also appear to be paying off, the company says that fewer employers report that voluntary benefits are at the forefront of their overall strategy.
“Employees who are very satisfied with their benefits are more than twice as likely to report being very satisfied with their jobs,” notes Todd Katz, executive vice president, Group, Voluntary and Worksite Benefits, with MetLife. “Because of this, offering a wider variety of benefits pays dividends for both employers and employees.”
Katz says the study indicates that benefits are a strong driver for employee loyalty, with 44% of respondents indicating that having benefits customized to meet their needs would be an even stronger pull to keep them happy and motivated on the job.
That ability to personalize their own benefits choices as part of a workplace package is taking on more appeal, the study finds. Some 78% of workers say they would like a greater variety of benefits to choose from and 80% say it would be valuable to have benefits customized to their individual circumstances, or their age.
Most importantly, 60% indicated that they would be willing to bear more of the cost involved in order to have more personal benefits choices.
Even with strong employee support and enthusiasm, Katz says the survey indicates that employers themselves are less supportive of voluntary benefits being a cornerstone of their benefits strategy, with numbers dropping almost 10% since the 2012 survey.
“This shift in employer focus is somewhat unexpected,” Katz says. “But rather than a change in strategy, this is likely a result of employers being consumed by health care reform and other cost control strategies.”
Katz suggests that employers continue to consider the long-term goodwill and retention benefits of offering a solid array of voluntary choices.
“The employee satisfaction numbers make it clear that voluntary benefit strategies are paying off for employers and that attention should not be shifted from existing plans. Changing course now may have negative effects on loyalty and productivity in the future.”
Despite Delayed Key Provision, Health Care Reform Triggers Benefits Action Among Employers
Originally posted March 03, 2014 on https://www.voluntary.com
Employers report impact on benefits funding, opening opportunity for voluntary benefits
NEWARK, N.J.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--With Affordable Care Act deadlines imminent in 2014 and 2015, employers are reporting the increased impact of health care reform on various aspects of employee benefits. According to Health Care Reform: Full Steam Ahead, the first in a series of five research briefs based on The Prudential Insurance Company of America’s (Prudential’s) Eighth Annual Study of Employee Benefits: Today & Beyond, nearly half (49%) of employers report they are extremely or very likely to make a high-deductible health plan their only health insurance option.
“The Affordable Care Act could very well usher in a new era for and emphasis on voluntary benefits. More employers are utilizing them for recruiting and retaining talent and employees increasingly view them as a cost-effective way to protect their families’ financial futures.”
“Although employers anticipate scaling back benefit offerings due to cost considerations, there’s great opportunity for them to offer voluntary benefits in order to continue providing attractive benefits to their employees,” said Vishal Jain, vice president, Strategy, Planning and Business Insights, Prudential Group Insurance. “The Affordable Care Act could very well usher in a new era for and emphasis on voluntary benefits. More employers are utilizing them for recruiting and retaining talent and employees increasingly view them as a cost-effective way to protect their families’ financial futures.”
According to the report, 73% of employers say the law is having an impact on benefits service and support and 69% report there is an impact on benefits communications. “With a shifting benefits landscape, carriers are now focused on being a trusted resource for employers while offering a full spectrum of services such as enrollment communications, benefits education, record keeping, and administrative services,” Jain said.
In addition to highlighting the law’s potential impact on voluntary benefits, health insurance exchanges central to the legislation are top of mind for employees surveyed. Key findings include:
Employees are increasingly confident more Americans will be covered under the Affordable Care Act (43%, up 7 percentage points from 2012). An expanding number feel fewer employers will offer health insurance (44%, a 13 percentage point increase from 2012), and 38% of those employees believe their employer will drop coverage.
Most employees report having neither a favorable nor unfavorable opinion toward both public and private exchanges.
About one-third of employees report they have heard of but know little about public or private exchanges while one-in-five say they have never heard of either before the survey.
“As employers evaluate the implications of public and private exchanges, the importance of their partnerships with carriers will continue to grow. Employers will look for carriers that provide value, make benefits administration easier, help employees make better benefit decisions, and provide excellent customer service,” said Jain. “We’re poised to support our customers with innovative and cost-effective benefit solutions, coupled with a full array of services designed to improve employees’ financial wellness.”
Dental health savings plans suppress employer ACA aches
Originally posted February 14, 2014 by Michael Giardina on https://ebn.benefitnews.com
Industry onlookers are saying that the voluntary exemption in the Affordable Care Act will do little to improve dental health across the nation as projections point to federal and health exchanges doing little to lower costs for Americans. However, can private dental exchanges and savings plans help to fill this void?
With more than 120 million Americans in need of dental coverage according to data from the National Association of Dental Plans, DentalPlans.com, an exchange that has been in operation since 1999, says that adults will find that stand-alone dental plans will only be available on public exchanges with the purchase of medical insurance plans.
“The ACA does not require adults to be covered for dental services in medical plans,” says Jennifer Stoll, president of DentalPlans.com . “Therefore, adult dental benefits have to be purchased separately, because they are optional under the law.”
Due to the ACA, the NADP explains that about 30 to 40 million will enter the dental plan market while about 10 to 20 million will lose or change their current plans. Because of these expected changes, Stoll says employees can benefit with the savings plan model.
“Purchasing a dental savings plan can help the employee get the oral care they need with savings of 10% to 60% off what they would pay out-of-pocket,” says Stoll.
The American Dental Association said in a recent report that an estimated 5.3 million adults will attain oral health coverage as a result of the ACA. This will reduce the number of adults without dental benefits by about 5%, according to the April 2013 study, which notes that more than 8.7 million children will benefit from the new provisions.
“The ACA is a missed opportunity, and we have a long way to go in ensuring access to oral health for all Americans,” says Dr. Marko Vujicic, managing vice president of the ADA’s Health Policy Resource Centers. “This is especially true for adults, who have experienced greater financial barriers to dental care in recent years.”
Communicating these financial barriers could help employers and employees. DentalPlans.com currently offers plans to employers that start $6.00 per employee/month. For an average family, which includes two adults and two dependent children, families can save $626 on annual ADA recommended treatments, says the dental savings plan retailer.
DentalPlans.com offers more than 30 different plans, which fall under brands like Aetna, Careington, Signature Wellness and UNI-CARE.
“Since dental care for adults is not a required Essential Health Benefit under the ACA, employers are able to offer savings plans to their employees any time,” Stoll explains. “The plans can be offered completely voluntary with no employer contribution requirement. The employer is able to offer a dental savings plans that are affordable rather than offering nothing at all.”
But can dental health translate into more productive employees? Stoll says yes. Dental insurance can treat adults in the early stages of bleeding gums, infections and cavities so that employees do not miss work when the pain becomes unbearable.
“Adults miss work due to their own dental illnesses, but also many adults stay home with kids who have to miss school due to toothaches and dental illness as well,” Stoll says.
Moreover, Stoll explains that dental insurance, a missed and often forgotten voluntary option, can become an “added benefit to an employee’s compensation package.”
“Employers experienced enhanced productivity and performance of employees because they could take better care of their own and their families’ oral health,” Stoll explains. “With the recent slowdown in the economy, many employers wonder if they can continue to offer dental benefits to their employees.”
Top 3 voluntary products poised for takeoff in 2014
Originally posted January 06, 2014 by Caitlin Bronson on https://www.ibamag.com
As small businesses and individuals consider their healthcare strategies within the context of the Affordable Care Act, several industry research bodies suggest voluntary benefits and services will emerge as a boom market for producer sales in the next five years.
According to the Towers Watson 2013 Voluntary Benefits and Services Survey, the importance of voluntary products in a company’s rewards strategy will grow 27% in that timeframe, while nearly 90% of producers surveyed by Eastbridge Consulting Group said they expect sales of voluntary benefit plans to increase.
While the most common voluntary products like vision, dental and disability will continue to see stable sales, however, Towers Watson said the following three are the ones to watch in 2014.
If you’re not already offering these plans, now may be the time to make a concentrated push for clients looking to expand their rewards strategy in a cost-effective way.
Critical Illness
Small businesses with fewer than 50 employees are not required to offer employee medical coverage under the Affordable Care Act, but many are looking to provide some sort of benefit plan to attract and retain quality workers.
As such, Towers Watson expects affordable medical benefits like critical illness or accident insurance to increase in sales in the upcoming two years. In a survey of small business employers, Towers Watson found 8% plan to introduce a critical illness plan in 2014 and another 13% are considering such a plan in 2015.
Accident plans are already popular, but another 9% of survey respondents said they are considering adding one by 2015.
This tallies with the experience of Tye Elliott, vice president for core broker sales with Aflac.
“Critical illness and accident plans have been thought of as secondary, but that’s not the case anymore,” Elliot said. “Small businesses want to invest in their employees, but they want to do it practically. At a very small out-of-pocket cost, [critical illness benefits] are amazing in terms of the loyalty that builds among your clients.”
Financial Counseling
Nearly 20% of small businesses told Towers Watson they were considering adding financial counseling benefits within the next two years, particularly during this fall’s 2014 enrollment season.
Towers Watson expects employers will want to increase workers’ retirement and personal finance knowledge as the burden of financial planning falls increasingly to individuals, who pay as little as $5 to $20 a month for such benefits.
Financial counseling can even be paid solely by employees through payroll deferral, meaning no cost for employers and increased ease and peace of mind for workers.
Identity Theft Protection
With widely publicized cyber breaches like the ones that afflicted Target and Snapchat this holiday season, identity theft protection is going to be a hot item in 2014.
In fact, a recent poll from LifeLock indicated nearly 60% of producers have fielded requests from commercial clients on identity protection benefits.
Like other voluntary packages, identity theft protection is available at a generally low cost to employers. Average coverage ranges from $7 to $20 a month, with most policies offering coverage of up to $1mn.
Greg Meyer of N.C.-based Worksite Benefit Advisors said the real market for producers is in small- to medium-sized businesses, as larger employers are often targeted directly by vendors. An effective pitch from an educated agent could do wonders.
“Brokers really need to show employers the impact that ID theft plays on lost productivity caused by ID theft of an employee,” Meyer said. “If you have an employee whose identity is stolen on the road, this not only impacts that company’s corporate credit card account, it impacts productivity because the road warrior will be off the road coping with the stress and drama that goes along with trying to recover and recoup his or her credit.”
According to Towers Watson, 20% of small businesses are considering adopting identity theft protection policies by 2015.
6 voluntary trends and opportunities for 2014
Originally posted on https://eba.benefitnews.com
Experts in the voluntary field share predictions for the coming year — and some pretty crazy products that can now be sold through payroll deduction. Comments compiled at SourceMedia’s Workplace Benefits Transitions conference in Chicago Dec. 10-12
Voluntary overall
“[Voluntary] prospects are outstanding because change brings opportunity. Not only today, but going into the future, it’s going to present a lot of great opportunities for us,” said Charlie Grim, sales manager at The BenefitSource in Elmhurst, Ill. While conference co-chair Walter Podgurski noted that Gil Lowerre, president of Eastbridge Consulting and leading expert in voluntary research, has predicted that 2014 will once again be a banner year for the products with health reform fully in place.
Long-term care
Technology
Employer actions need to catch up with financial wellness wishes
Originally posted December 12, 2013 by Andrea Davis on https://ebn.benefitnews.com
Employers are embracing the concept of financial wellness, with 81% of HR professionals saying they believe they are at least somewhat responsible for their employees’ financial wellness, according to a survey released this week by Bank of America Merrill Lynch.
Seventy percent of the 1,000 companies surveyed offer various forms of education related to retirement and, to a lesser extent, planning for health care costs (38%), as well as debt management and budgeting (15%).
And while employers say they’re interested in the concepts of financial wellness and retirement readiness, their actions may have some catching up to do. Less than half of large companies (48%) has a financial wellness strategy in place for employees or plan to add one in the next two years. Among medium-sized companies, the percentage drops to 43%. Among small companies, 26% have a financial wellness strategy in place or plan to add one in the next two years.
“It will be interesting to see how quickly do they then adopt practical, tangible programs to realize their aspirations of what they want to do with their employees,” says Kevin Crain, senior relationship executive for Bank of America Merrill Lynch. “It’s still early stage in their thinking.”
Perhaps not surprisingly given all the attention the Affordable Care Act is receiving, one-third (32%) of HR professionals say they’ve increased the time they spend educating employees about the role workplace benefits play in their financial security.
One area many employers agree needs greater focus and employee education is the rising cost of health care. Eighty-one percent of companies report an increase in health care costs during the last two years, and many admit to having had to pass these rising costs along to their employees. The study found that more than one-third (35%) of employers now provide employees with education about what health care could cost them during retirement, up from 21% in 2012. Among employers who provide at least some education about retiree health care costs, nearly half (45%) believe more needs to be done in this area.
“Employers now understand their employees need far more transparent and easier ways to understand what the cost of health care will be in the future,” says Crain. “The health care expense piece [of retirement] was always, in my mind, not as robust as it could have been.” With all the attention on the ACA, health care costs in retirement is an issue “that’s been brought to the forefront,” he says.
Offering Benefits Still Gives Employers a Competitive Advantage
Originally posted November 14, 2013 on www6.lexisnexis.com
Employee Benefit Research Institute issued the following news release:
The vast majority of workers say that the benefits package an employer offers x{2015} especially health insurance x{2015} is important to their decision to accept or reject a job, but a quarter are not satisfied with them, according to a new survey.
More than three-quarters of employees state that the benefits package an employer offers prospective employees is extremely (33 percent) or very (45 percent) important in their decision to accept or reject a job, according to the 2013 Health and Voluntary WorkplaceBenefits Survey (WBS), by the nonpartisan Employee Benefit Research Institute (EBRI) and Greenwald and Associates.
Nevertheless, 31 percent are only somewhat satisfied with the benefits offered by their current employer, and 26 percent are not satisfied.
Workers identify lower cost (compared with purchasing benefits on their own) and choice as strong advantages of voluntarybenefits. However, they are split with respect to their comfort in having their employer choose their benefits provider, and think the possibility that they may have to pay the full cost of any voluntary benefits is a disadvantage.
Workers continue to rank health insurance as the first or second most important benefit provided by employers: 88 percent of employees report that employer-provided health insurance is extremely or very important, far more than for any other workplacebenefit, the WBS found.
"Employee benefits continue to be important to workers," said Paul Fronstin, director of EBRI's Health Research and Education Program and co-author of the report. "Employers that offer a strong employee benefits package should find themselves with a competitive advantage over other companies when it comes to attracting and retaining desirable employees."
As the EBRI report notes, benefits coverage in the workplace, including health insurance, is far from universal. Three-quarters ofemployees (7 6 percent) report their employer offers them health insurance. Two-thirds each indicate they are offered dentalinsurance (67 percent) or a retirement savings plan (66 percent), and more than half say they are offered vision insurance 60 percent), life insurance (58 per cent), and short-term disability insurance (5 5 percent) by their employer. About half are offered long-term disability insurance (49 percent) and accidental death and dismemberment insurance (48 percent).
However, just 38 percent report being offered a traditional pension or defined benefit plan, and only one-quarter (25 percent) are offered long-term care insurance. Fewer report being offered retiree health insurance (22 percent) or other non-core ancillary benefits.
The full report, "Views on the Value of Voluntary Workplace Benefits: Findings from the 2013 Health and Voluntary WorkplaceBenefits Survey," is published in the November EBRI Notes, online at www.ebri.org