Group Insurance Policy For Employees: How To Choose Your Coverage
Group Insurance Policy For Employees: How To Choose Your Coverage
If you’ve been keeping an eye on the news, you probably already know that healthcare costs are skyrocketing upward. In the past twenty years, the costs for the average family have gone up nearly seventy percent.
Business owners are in a unique position to be able to help their employees avoid some of the rising costs of healthcare. Offering a group insurance policy for employees can help them close the gap between their needs and what’s offered by their provincial plan.
Employee retention is also a hidden benefit of group insurance plans. Group insurance policies show employees you care about them, which can lead to higher employee retention!
Everyone is different, so insurance policies have to vary as well. Here’s your guide to determining your coverage.
How To Determine Your Coverage
Depending on the needs of your employees, there are different options that you can choose when it comes to group insurance policies. To make sure that you’re getting the one that’s right for you, there are some questions you should ask before signing on the bottom line.
Who Is Eligible
It’s never a bad idea to ask your employees ahead of time if they want to take part in a group insurance plan. Some people might already be on a spouse’s plan or have full coverage from a private insurer.
There is also a minimum number of hours an employee must work before they can be covered by a group health insurance plan. The requirement is different depending on the insurance company.
If any of your employees are part-time, this is an important factor to keep in mind.
How The Plan Is Administered
You’d hire a healthcare benefits provider that offers group insurance policies. This provider will be the one who actually takes care of processing insurance claims and covering healthcare costs for employees.
As the employer, you can choose to pay for a portion of the plan and have the employees pay the rest as a deduction from their paycheck.
You could also choose an Administrative Services Only (ASO) plan, but be advised that the employer pays for claims using this type of plan. You’d still pay a group insurance provider to manage claims and create reports. A flat fee can be deducted from the employees pay to cover the cost, this is usually stable throughout 12 months.
Hiring a healthcare benefits provider is usually the best option for most businesses.
Potential Benefits
Once you’ve determined that a group insurance policy for employees is the right move, it’s time to take a look at some of the benefits a plan could offer.
A group insurance policy for employees can come with a variety of different benefits. You’ll need to find one that works for you. When choosing a new policy, think about the people who work in your business.
What’s going on in their lives outside of work? What are the majority of them most likely to need?
As you build your plan, keep these questions in mind. It will help you decide what’s important to have and what can be left off of the contract.
Here are some of the common benefits you can choose from.
Extended Healthcare Coverage
Your employees are already covered by their provincial healthcare plan. Extended health care coverage makes sure that even if they need care that isn’t covered by their government-funded plan, they won’t have to pay as much out of pocket.
Extended coverage usually includes things like pricier prescription drugs, emergency travel outside of the province, vision care, and lengthy hospital stays.
Dental
Dental benefits are pretty self-explanatory — they allow employees to get the dental care that they need. There is also an option to pay for a higher coverage plan, in case procedures like root canals or wisdom teeth removal are needed.
These visits would usually be quite expensive, so having a dental insurance plan can help to ease some of this burden on your employees.
Disability
No one ever plans on becoming sick enough to be unable to work, and they definitely don’t plan on being seriously injured. Unfortunately, these things happen, and disability insurance helps to make sure that employees don’t miss out on pay even if they can’t come to work.
You can choose to sponsor long term or short term disability benefits for your employees, or a mix of both.
Group Life Insurance
Life insurance is meant to care for the employee’s family if he or she dies while paying into the plan. This can help to pay for funeral expenses, settling any outstanding bills, or even things like caring for dependents.
This can be based on how much each employee earns or a set amount if a level benefit is selected. o
Accidental Death and Dismemberment
This benefit coincides with the Life Insurance Benefit and is 24hr coverage. If a plan member dies accidentally or becomes paralyzed or disabled as a result of an accidental death and dismemberment injury, benefits may be payable to their family.
Critical Illness
Can be a life-changing event that can cause a financial burden that you don’t need when you are sick! With Critical Illness Insurance, it can help you meet the financial demands that often accompany a significant health change. A one-time lump sum benefit may be payable to you or your family is diagnosed with a life-threatening illness.
Find The Group Insurance Policy For Employees That Suits Your Needs
Once you know how to choose the type of coverage that’s right for your business, it’s time to select a plan. With the number of options out there, that can seem like an even bigger challenge — but it doesn’t have to be.
BPGS works with over twenty benefits providers to help you create a plan that’s tailored to your needs. You can be sure that you’ll work with people who are local, professional, and friendly.
