No one wants to see their key employee walk out their door, especially if they spent time and money turning that employee into a work of art. If there was a way to increase retention and acquisition with little or no cost to you, would you do it? I sure bet you would.

Why Businesses Should Offer Voluntary Benefits

Offering benefits can significantly increase a company’s acquisition and retention of employees, but benefits can often be pricey. Voluntary benefits can be the differentiation your company needs that not only costs little to none to the employer, but also can offer your employees group rates on services that are often wanted. Seems like a win-win, and it is.

What are Voluntary benefits?

Voluntary benefits are benefits (normally ancillary products, but also legal plans, financial planning, discount programs, pet insurance, and a few more) an employer can offer their employees that are paid 100% by the employees themselves, which means that the employer has no contribution included (no cost to the business). Examples of some traditional voluntary benefits are: dental care, vision care, short-term disability, long-term disability, and personal accident insurance.

Benefits of Purchasing Voluntary Products from Your Employer

So, why is it beneficial offering voluntary benefits even if the employee pays for them at 100% cost? One of the reasons is that voluntary benefits purchased from an employer are less costly than the individual insurance counterparts because group rates are generally lower than individual rates (because of the law of large numbers). This allows the employees to purchase the voluntary benefits at a “discounted” price, if you will, because of the savings they have due to group rates. Group voluntary benefits also add the convenience of payroll deductions so that the employees don’t have to put any effort into paying for their benefits, which makes the process of obtaining and maintaining insurance, much easier. Group voluntary insurance also allows the employees to save time and headaches by offering multiple types of insurance in one area, which makes shopping for insurance very easy and convenient.

Employer Advantages of Offering Voluntary Benefits

Being an employer, one of your main goals is to have very impressive human capital and there may be only a few ways to retain and acquire this capital: offering higher pay than your competitors, having a better work culture and location, and benefits. Competitive environments these days are saturated with different benefits and the most competitive recruiting companies these days use benefits to distinguish themselves. How many employees are you willing to risk to another company simply because you didn’t want to set up voluntary benefits (again, at little to no cost, and very little administration)?

I hope you have learned how to retain employees and acquire more, and if you have any questions regarding voluntary benefits or other benefits to help retain employees, please comment at the bottom or go to my contact page. Have a great day!

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