Are You Starting To Plan For Your Employee Benefits In 2024?
If you need new ideas, this post is for you. I’ll be sharing more about Budget, Benefits, & Value
We know we need to address all of the aspects of employee well-being. That would include physical, mental, emotional, financial and purpose. It has to be balanced with your budget and your employee’s ability to pay their share if applicable.
Budget
Most employers have a budget for employee benefits. We usually tell our employers to budget for a 12% renewal cost and 1% for each month for renewal increases. For January 2021, we didn’t see many that were that high. And it is too early to predict trends for mid-year 2022 or 2023.
Benefits
At Benefits by Design, we know one size does not fit all. Healthcare is human-centric. What works for a super-healthy employee does not necessarily work for an employee with health issues. We will help you put together an offering that will work for all of your employee population.
Offering a choice of Benefits
Whether you are a large employer or a small one, there are lots of options available for employee benefits. Offering a choice doesn’t mean it will be more expensive. At Benefits by Design, we work with all of the Health Insurance Companies in California. We offer Creative Benefits. There are ways to establish a budget and allow employees to buy up if they want more as a payroll deduction.
What we are seeing is that most employers are offering Kaiser and then at least one additional medical insurance company.
For employers under 100 employees, California Choice or Covered CA small business plans are popular because they provide multiple carrier options at different price points.
California Choice is a small group exchange and I have seen as many as 5 different health insurance companies offered, depending on where the employee lives.
Covered CA small businesses can work well for employers with low-wage-earning employees because if employee-only coverage is offered, the employee can enroll their dependents on Covered CA and get a subsidy if they qualify.
H.S.A, H.R,A and F.S.A
Many employers are saving cost on their benefits using High Deductible Health plans with Health Savings Accounts (H.S.A), Health Reimbursement Accounts (HRA)to lower an employee’s overall out-of-pocket costs and Flexible Spending Accounts (FSA) to allow employees to pay for uncovered benefits expenses with pre-tax dollars.
Specialty benefits
Some specialty benefits can be voluntary, which means the employer pays the monthly bill, but the employee pays for them through payroll deduction. If payroll is reduced because the employee is getting benefits instead of salary, that reduces employer taxes and employee costs. You can set up a Section 125 plan, Premium Only Plan, that allows employees to pay their portion with pre-tax dollars.
Depending on how competitive employee benefits are in your industry, employees may expect to have dental, vision, employee assistance programs, disability, and life insurance to be employer paid. At Benefits by Design, we have a lot of ideas we can propose to help meet your needs in this category.
Some of the other things that can be part of the package are Pet insurance, student loan pay-off benefits, adoption assistance, fitness class passes, and commuter benefits.
Value for the organization and your employees
If you are not sure what will interest your employees and motivate them the most, consider doing a focus group or an employee survey.
At Benefits by Design, we can offer the best health insurance benefits in California. Contact us for more information.
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(415)-524-8959 Larkspur, CA office
(760) 696-3573 San Diego, CA office
