It happens every year like clockwork: benefits renewal season. You and your team consider what healthcare plan makes the most sense for your company, weighing factors like coverage, quality and of course, cost.

That last factor can be a real sticking point for many employers. You want to save money, but the final dollar amount isn’t the only metric for measuring the value that your healthcare plan can bring to your business.

Consider these additional benefits a quality healthcare plan can bring to your company.

Attract New Talent

Are you struggling to hire the top talent they need to help their business grow? Even if you can afford to pay top dollar, salary isn’t the only factor that candidates consider when evaluating a job offer.

Job seekers weigh a variety of options in relation to their salary; for example, if employees will be compensated less, then they value their healthcare benefits even more. According to Aflac, 55% of employees would consider accepting a job offer for lower compensation in exchange for a more robust benefits package.

Talking through the details of the benefits package is a crucial conversation you’ll have with an employee during the final hiring stages/early onboarding. If you can promise talent a stronger benefit offering than the competition, it could mean the difference between hiring a stellar new employee or losing them.

Retain Existing Talent

While you want to remain competitive in recruiting new employees, remember that replacing an employee who left for a job with better benefits will ultimately cost a lot more. In fact, it can cost 1.5 to 2 times the departing employee’s salary – and that’s a conservative estimate. These turnover costs add up fast, especially considering the lost productivity inherent in training a new employee.

Here are some quick facts about the importance of benefits for retaining employees:

• According to a LinkedIn study, companies that rated highly on compensation and benefits saw 56% lower attrition.
• 80% of workers would keep a job with benefits rather than take one that offered more pay and no benefits.

Simply offering healthcare isn’t enough to keep your best employees. While full-time employees generally expect to receive healthcare through their employer, what they really need is quality healthcare. Healthcare networks with a high satisfaction rate can keep employees extra happy.

Better Employee Physical and Mental Health

A stronger healthcare offering leads to employees and dependents who are healthier both physically and mentally. The benefits of having healthy employees are endless. Healthy employees are more productive, less prone to errors and accidents and are more engaged with the workplace. Healthy employees (and their healthy families) are also much less costly because they’re more likely to receive preventive care to address any issues.

In recent years, companies have moved beyond simply providing an employer-sponsored healthcare plan to actually investing in their employees’ health with wellness programming. This has not only helped employers to incentivize healthy living among their employees, but also serves as a recruiting and retention tool to demonstrate to workers how much the company cares about its employees.

Walking clubs and yoga classes are a great start, but just knowing that healthcare coverage isn’t an issue is huge for your employees. 31% of employees would not be able to cover an unexpected out-of-pocket medical bill greater than $500. If employees knew that they had options to help manage an unexpected medical bill, they’d have greater peace of mind.

Improve Workplace Culture

Bettering a team’s physical and mental health requires creating a culture of health within the workplace. Your benefits offering may be only one component of creating that culture, but it serves as the cornerstone. The health benefits you provide to employees sends a signal for how much the company values their health and wellness.

Additionally, how you treat health and wellness says a lot about the company’s brand as a whole. There is a strong correlation between companies that offer great benefits and companies that have high satisfaction among current employees and alumni.

A robust, competitive benefits package sets the tone for the organizational culture. As with salary, your benefits offering is a measure of how much you value your employees. Giving them a comprehensive provider network with quality care at an affordable cost demonstrates how much you care about your workforce.

Improve Your Bottom Line

Evaluating health insurance can be a cumbersome process. You just want to get through the benefits meeting so that you can get back to daily operations. While you would rather focus on improving an internal process or strengthening a customer relationship to increase revenue, adjusting the benefits plan can be just as impactful on the bottom line.

Self-funding can seem like a lot of work; however, the financial opportunities are great. Instead of paying a fully-insured premium every year, employers pay only for the claims incurred by the plan, while pocketing the savings. In a fully-funded model, 15% to 20% of premium payments to large carriers go towards plan administration and insurer profits. Fees for third-party administrators (TPAs) are much less. Because your company doesn’t have to compensate a third-party insurer, you can charge lower premiums, which can be beneficial for employees.

Offer Your Employees a Quality Self-Funded Solution

HPS’s level-funded and self-funded health insurance offerings can help you build a creative, cost-saving health plan. Members have access to our broad independent provider network to receive the best quality care. Interest-free payment plans and our simple SuperEOB make it easy for employees to understand and manage healthcare costs.

To learn more about these options and services and how to take advantage of them, contact your broker today!