Employee Benefits
Benefits are as important, if not more important, than the rate at which your employees are paid. To be able to attract and maintain a healthy and driven staff, it’s essential that you choose the right balance of benefits for your team. Take a look at some of our basic information about employee benefits to see what we mean.
What Are Employee Benefits?
The benefits you provide demonstrate good faith to your employees. They provide both legal and personal satisfaction by allowing your staff to access valuable resources, including reasonable insurance and retirement plans. They also allow you to control additional competitive aspects of your business to attract quality talent.
Why Offer Employee Benefits?
It’s important to offer a benefits package in order to recruit and maintain the best employees. After all, your stakeholders are the heartbeat of your healthy business. Beyond their need for monetary compensation, your employees have many other needs that factor into their ability to maintain healthy working lives. If your benefits package is not strong enough, your employees will become dissatisfied and either struggle to maintain productivity or leave your business to find a job that gives them what they want.
What Benefits Must Be Offered?
U.S. law mandates only three types of benefits:
- Social Security
- Unemployment Insurance
- Workers’ Compensation
Depending on your state and other specific criteria, your business may also be required to offer additional benefits, including:
- Disability Insurance. California, New Jersey, Hawaii, Rhode Island, and Puerto Rico require organizations to provide disability insurance to all employees.
- Leave Benefits. If your small business is public (government) or private (non-government) with more than 50 employees, the Family and Medical Leave Act (FLMA) mandates 12 weeks of protected, unpaid leave per year under certain conditions, including the birth of a child to the employee’s family or the care of a serious illness contracted either by the employee or by a member of his or her immediate family.
- COBRA. When an employee is fired, the Consolidated Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act (COBRA) requires that health benefits be continued for a short amount of time following his or her dismissal.
Once you’ve made sure to provide your employees with all of the benefits required by law, it’s up to you to make a smart choice in deciding which additional benefits to offer. If you’re having trouble choosing, there are many different group plans and flexible spending plans available that will allow you to offer a wide choice of benefits to your employees. You can learn more about what kinds of plans are available for your small business budget by looking to some of these resources for more information:
- Industry and Trade Associations
- Small Business Insurance Professionals
- State and Local Chambers of Commerce
- Small Business Benefits Consultants
