9 best health insurance benefits for small businesses

What is one health insurance benefit all small businesses should consider?

To help your small business consider what benefits to include, we asked HR experts and business leaders this question for their thoughts. From prioritizing mental wellness to considering supplemental insurance, there are several things that your small business can do when it comes to health insurance.

Here are nine health insurance benefits that all small businesses should consider:

• Get What Your Employees Need

• Dive Deeper Into Life Insurance Benefits

• Retain Your Top Talent

• Prioritize Mental Wellness

• Provide Wide Accessibility

• Increase Quality of Life

• Help Your Team Stay Active

• Consider Supplemental Insurance

• Save on Taxes With an HRA

Get What Your Employees Need

The important question employers should ask themselves about health insurance is less about what benefits to offer and more about which plan best suits their employees. Most carriers offer dozens of unique healthcare plans, while companies only offer a few to their employees. Before jumping into the details about benefits, employers should take a step back to determine which healthcare plans will help the most employees while staying cost effective.

— Brandon Berglund, Berglund Insurance

Dive Deeper Into Life Insurance Benefits

As an entrepreneur and a father of two, life insurance is one benefit that all small business owners should consider. And that’s not just because I offer life insurance! The benefit of offering life insurance as a benefit is that it can help address key items like business continuation or even help with employee retention. While some people think of life insurance for the death benefit, there are actually more benefits to a policy when operating a small business.

— Chris Abrams, Abrams Insurance Solutions

Retain Your Top Talent

There are many ways that small business health insurance can help your company operate more strategically, efficiently, and effectively. Offering group health insurance can help small businesses retain their top talent. This also keeps employees happy and healthy, keeping job satisfaction up. Anytime a business can provide insurance benefits to their employees, no matter the size of the company, it goes a long way.

— Vicky Franko, Insura

Prioritize Mental Wellness

Mental health benefits including regular therapy sessions. So many people have experienced loss during the pandemic. Whether that’s the loss of a loved one or the loss of an income stream, or even just the loss of your work-life balance now that most people have started working from home. Taking time for your mental health and having that benefit covered in your health insurance policy goes a long way toward having a happy, healthy, and productive team.

— Rronniba Pemberton, Markitors

Provide Wide Accessibility

Given all of the uncertainty surrounding our society with the onset of COVID-19 and stay-at-home orders, I think it’s important for health insurance plans to have wide accessibility. For example, a Preferred Provider Organization (PPO) plan allows patients to use any physician they wish to use, whether or not it’s in their network. I think this is pretty crucial, especially with remote work causing people to relocate and/or work from different locations than where their office is.

— Brandon Brown, Grin

Increase Quality of Life

I would suggest any company that wants to maintain customer loyalty offer paid vacation and sick days for their employees. We all need time off to relieve ourselves from the workload and to have a quality of life. It tells your employees you care and respect their overall wellness and shows appreciation for their hard work. Just as important, if somebody gets ill, you don’t want them to feel compelled to work and jeopardize their health even more while doing a sub-par job. Ultimately, it’s to everyone’s benefit and creates a better environment for all to work in.

— Katie Lyon, Allegiance Flag Supply

Help Your Team Stay Active

My company offers a gym membership reimbursement. I have never seen this before as a benefit offering, and it’s great. They reimburse or pay the membership directly. Our employees work 12-hour shifts, so this is a great way to encourage people to stay active.

— Shelbey Grimes, Trinity Air Medical

Consider Supplemental Insurance

Providing employee benefits can be out of reach for many small businesses due to cost. However, in a competitive job market, most employees are looking for some benefits. Employers can offer supplemental benefits, such as short-term disability, accident, and even cancer insurance to employees at no cost to an employer. While an employer may choose to pick up all or a portion of the price, it is not required. Supplemental insurance provides a low or no-cost option for employers while giving employees the choice to obtain coverage.

— Kimberly Bogues, Flourish Business Services, LLC

Save on Taxes With an HRA

A health reimbursement arrangement (HRA) is a tax-advantaged and affordable option to traditional insurance. Employees are reimbursed by the employers for medical expenses and individual insurance premiums. Different from Health Savings Accounts (HSAs) and Flexible Spending Accounts (FSAs) that are accounts, the HRA model operates on the basis of reimbursements. Employees will pay the insurance company or doctor’s office directly and then submit a claim to get reimbursed for their expenses tax-free.

— Anton Konopliov, Palma Violets Loans

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