As an insurance broker, you probably are all too aware that many HR staff approach their benefits packages by offering the minimum level of benefits to their employees. Exceptions exist, of course: there are HR staff who get it that comprehensive benefits—health insurance packages that include dental and vision benefits—reap rewards for the company.
For those clients who fall into the first group—the “less is enough” category—here are three reasons you need to encourage HR to offer robust benefits for their employees.
1. Who are Your Clients’ Employees?
Reason number one: ask your clients to step into the shoes of their employees and view the benefits packages offered from the employees’ perspective. Let’s look at what that means, generation by generation.
First, ask your client to identify the age demographics of employees at your company. Is the staff primarily Baby Boomers? Generation X? Or are they the younger Millennial cohort?
Let your HR client know that each generation has its own cultural relationship with work and with the benefits package they may be offered.
Millennials. This generation especially is demanding benefits packages that include vision and dental care. They do not want the extra hassle, as they see it, of shopping for the right coverage. The more complete the package offered, the more likely Millennials are to be happy. Millennials also may be starting families or in the planning stages of doing so. They may recognize, early on, the need to provide vision and dental coverage for young family members.
Generation X. This group is already quite focused on providing for their family. Offering health insurance packages that include vision and dental coverage translates into helping them care for their family. What could be more important? Moreover, most Gen X households include two working parents. They have zero free time to shop for dental and vision plans and will be grateful to the employers who provide those.
Baby Boomers. This generation is aging, and are likely to require more care. To them, vision and dental packages are a necessity, not a perk that’s simply nice to have.
2. Attracting Key People in a Competitive Business Environment
The second reason your clients should offer complete healthcare packages is one that impacts their company’s bottom line.
Regardless of the company’s industry or mission, talent is the critical factor that can impact the company’s success and long-term sustainability. The ability to hire and retain the best talent in a competitive business environment is key—and the company’s benefits package just may make the difference between an employee agreeing to come on board or going elsewhere, especially if your client’s benefits package meets or exceeds the needs of the employee’s family.
While offering a great benefits package may not guarantee employee retention, it is quite likely that in a robust industry, employees will seek out a company with better benefits and make the leap when they find one.
As an aside, the client might consider encouraging the company’s senior executives to factor in employee morale when they perform a cost-benefits analysis of the price of better benefits. Study after study consistently has indicated that employee morale—not salary—is the key to higher retention, as well as improved productivity.
3. Cost and Benefits of a Stellar Reputation
The third reason for your client’s company to offer complete healthcare packages is how that action adds to the company’s reputation among current and potential customers.
Whether your client’s company is based in a rural area or bustling municipality, its reputation as an enterprise that is good to its own employees does matter. Why? It simply is not a huge leap in customers’ minds that if a company skimps on employee benefits, it may skimp on things that matter to customers, such as product quality, in order to optimize profit.
On the other hand, companies that have a reputation for treating their employees well can expect to see new customers choosing to do business with, and becoming loyal to, that enterprise.
Finally, along with the reasons stated above, there is this: offering vision and dental care packages keeps employees healthier—and at their jobs—in two ways. First, dental and vision checkups offer prevention and education that translate into healthier employees. Second, those routine checkups can detect more serious diseases earlier, allowing for treatment before the condition progresses.
Without dental and vision packages, employees are more likely to skip routine prevention checkups and get caught with a health issue that is detected later and is harder to cure, not to mention more costly and time-consuming.
Prevention, healthier employees and a stronger bottom line: great reasons to encourage your clients to offer health insurance packages with vision and dental benefits included.