Types of Employee Benefits

employee benefits

When employees are seeking out potential employers they don’t just look at the salary that is on offer. They will also consider the benefits that the employee offers. This might seem like a drawback if you are a business owner, but it is an important way to offer competitive packages that will help you hire the best people for your open positions. How about Biscayne Risk’s benefits options? Let’s take a look at different kinds of benefits that you can offer that will give you a leg up in getting the best candidates.

The most obvious type of employee benefit that candidates are looking for is insurance of various kinds. The most important kind of insurance is medical insurance which is offered by almost every employer. Medical premiums can be expensive, which is why employers will often cover a share of the premium. Covering doctor and hospital visits, as well as prescriptions, is the most basic insurance coverage that you can offer.

Some employers will also offer dental insurance, which is more of a rarity. This will be most attractive to those with young kids who might need routine dental checkups.

Other kinds of insurance include vision insurance for glasses and eye doctor visits, cancer insurance, and hospital cost insurance. An additional attractive health benefit you can offer is something called a Health Reimbursement Account which is funded by the employer. It can be used to reimburse employees for certain health costs up to a certain dollar amount per year. Offering these medical benefits will make your business much more attractive to potential candidates.

Employee Benefits Related to Non-Medical Insurance

Other sorts of non-medical insurance plans cover certain adverse eventualities. Chief among these is life insurance, which pays out a certain amount in the event of the death of the policyholder. Disability and accident insurance can mitigate the effects of short-term and long-term damage due to injury. If your company is hiring for potentially dangerous positions it will be best to offer these sorts of insurance in addition to accidental death/dismemberment insurance. Otherwise, it might be difficult to fill your open position. 

Retirement Plan

There are also many kinds of non-insurance employee benefits that you can offer. Chief among them are retirement plans. Most employees will be looking to save for their retirement and a great way to help them do that is through a 401(k) plan. If you want to offer this employee benefit it will be imperative to partner with the right financial institution to avoid any tax or legal problems. It will almost certainly be worth it, however, since a good retirement plan can help you to attract the most qualified candidates for your open positions. 

Paid Time Off

Another benefit to consider is paid time off (PTO). Most employers will scale their PTO to the amount of time an employee has been with the company. A generous PTO schema will show potential employees that you are looking to promote a healthy work-life balance.   

These are not all of the benefits that you can offer your employees, but most benefits will fit into one of these categories. As you can see, there are many ways to compete in the market for the best employees. Consider what employees in the field you are hiring for would want most and offer those benefits. In that way, you will be staffed with a team that is both happy and fairly compensated.