Pros and Cons of Voluntary Worksite Benefits Insurance
For most entrepreneurs, offering voluntary worksite benefits to their employees is a game-changer. It helps them secure employee loyalty while attracting the best job applicants. However, it is important to do it the right way or you can spend time and money without getting enough of the benefits. How can you tell if you should offer this coverage? Keep reading to discover the pros and cons.
What Are Voluntary Worksite Benefits?
Voluntary worksite benefits are special employee benefits you offer to workers, usually as insurance coverage. This might include things like health insurance, dental insurance, vision insurance, and life insurance.
Offering workers these kinds of supplemental insurance has many advantages, but it also has some drawbacks. Keep reading to learn more about both so you can make the most informed decision.
Pro: More Competitive Job Applicants
One of the biggest benefits of offering this coverage to your workers is that it helps you market yourself to prospective employees. Subsequently, you create more competition for the position and ultimately get better applicants than you would have before.
Why is that? Imagine two businesses offer roughly similar salaries for the same job. All things being equal, workers would typically apply to the one offering more benefits. In this way, you can get better – and more – applicants.
Con: Added Costs for You
The most obvious drawback to offering voluntary benefits is that it’s an added cost for you. While the supplemental coverage is more affordable than most people imagine, it’s still an added cost you otherwise wouldn’t be paying.
For most businesses, that’s the elephant in the room: whether to take on an added cost or not. By studying the rest of the benefits, you can better understand whether those added costs will be worth it.
Pro: Increase Employee Job Satisfaction
One thing every good boss cares about is employee job satisfaction. Even if you don’t naturally care about workers out of the goodness of your heart, it’s a well-known fact that more satisfied workers will work harder and be less likely to leave (more on this one later).
And offering most kinds of supplemental insurance is an easy way to increase worker satisfaction in a real and measurable way. That’s because, at the end of the day, job satisfaction mostly comes down to whether or not employees believe their bosses care about them or not. Extra perks show you care, and employees who understand this will be happier and work harder.
Con: Communication Is Key
When you begin offering voluntary benefits, it’s a calculated risk. You’re paying extra money to offer your workers some awesome bonus coverage they didn’t have before. But whether they embrace this coverage or not comes down to how well you communicate with employees.
Most of your workers aren’t going to understand the true value of what you are offering (such as the value of dental coverage) until you explain it to them. If you have sometimes struggled with employee communications, you may find this difficult. But with a little effort, you can convince your employees to embrace this exciting opportunity.
Pro: Fewer Employee Callouts
The real enemy of your workplace productivity will always be workers calling out. Everyone needs to miss work occasionally, but every callout cuts into your ability to meet your various KPIs each quarter.
But here’s something you might not realize: Voluntary benefits help you with leave management because fewer employees will call out. Employees who feel valued by their employers are less likely to take days off. By creating an environment where workers are happier and not calling out as often, you can ensure that everyone wins.
Con: You Risk Offering Benefits They Don’t Care About
Strictly speaking, the exact supplemental coverage you offer is up to you. This means there is always a risk, however small, that you might end up offering coverage that employees don’t care about (for example, if your main benefit is vision insurance and very few workers wear glasses, they may not see the value in this).
If you’re offering multiple kinds of coverage or more substantial insurance such as health coverage, this is less of an issue. But if you’re worried about employees not engaging with the benefits, you can always survey current workers to ask what kind of supplemental coverage they want. This helps you get the coverage they care most about while making sure that workers know you paid attention to their requests.
Pro: Boost Employee Retention
We have reviewed how these voluntary benefits make workers more satisfied, less stressed, and less likely to call out of work. This brings us to something every employer should care about: Such voluntary coverage helps boost employee retention in a big way.
Retention is important for many reasons, including the fact that it is always more expensive to hire someone new than it is to retain your existing talent. In this way, voluntary benefits will soon pay for themselves, and they’ll also help you retain rockstar employees and keep your edge over the competition.
Get the Best Voluntary Worksite Benefits Insurance Today!
Now you know the pros and cons of these voluntary benefits. But do you know where you can get the best voluntary coverage for your employees?
Here at InsureOne, we specialize in helping entrepreneurs like yourself provide the best coverage to workers. To discover how we can help you increase job satisfaction and worker retention, come get a quote online. Alternatively, you can give us a quick call at 800-836-2240, or visit one of our nearby offices at your earliest convenience!