If you’re a small business owner, you may be thinking about providing health benefits to your employees, if you don’t already. But how do you know if it’s something you that will work for you? Is it financially feasible? If so, what are the options? And how do you go about looking into it?
Now, you can take a simple, 6 question quiz to determine what, if any, health benefit options are most suitable for your small business. After completing the quiz, keep reading for additional resources based on your results.
Is Providing Health Benefits Right For Your Small Business?
Providing health benefits to employees can be a great idea for many businesses in that it helps recruit and retain high performing workers, it encourages your staff to take preventative healthcare measures, and with some options it can be offered tax-free. While offering health benefits makes sense for some small businesses, not all are in the position to offer them.
Group Health Plans
A group health option will provide everyone in your company with healthcare coverage. These plans take into account not just one individual’s health, but the health of everyone in the company. Your company will obtain group rates from several different companies. Those firms make their calculations based on a number of factors to determine what kind of risk that specific workforce represents. Group plans may or may not be more expensive than individual plans. The risk is spread over a wider array of people.
Taxable Stipend
If you want to offer a taxable stipend to your employees, you would use a pure defined contribution health plan approach. Businesses can provide a health insurance stipend to employees to use for health insurance. It works like a healthcare allowance for health insurance. Some employers prefer this method rather than a one-size fits all group health insurance plan. With this option, employees choose their own health plan, employers fix their costs, and once it’s implemented, it takes less than 5 minutes per month to administer online.
Tax Free Reimbursement
You may want to consider a tax-free reimbursement either by way of a Health Reimbursement Arrangement (HRA) or a Health Reimbursement Plan (HRP). An HRA is a plan paid for by the employer to reimburse the medical expenses of its employees, their spouses, and dependents. HRAs are designed to give employees more choice and greater control over their healthcare coverage.
An HRP is a type of Section 105 self-insured medical reimbursement plan designed for premium reimbursement. Employers can use these plans as the foundation of “pure” defined contribution health benefits. An HRP is similar to a business expense account for personal health insurance.
No Health Benefits
Perhaps your small business is not in a financial place in which you can offer health benefits at this time. You don’t want to financially compromise your company, so you may need to re-evaluate in six months or a year and determine if then is a better time to look into health benefits for your employees.
Conclusion
If you are interested in offering health benefits for your employees, there are options available to you, depending on your needs. We hope this quiz was helpful in helping you determine what benefits you can offer at your small business.
What questions do you have about health benefits for small businesses? Let us know below.
