Employers Increasingly Using Benefits to Attract Workers
We have advocated for years that offering the right employee benefits can help your clients attract and retain their most-valued employees. It demonstrates how much they care about the health of their workers (and their dependents).
An added incentive for most employers to offer benefits is that the associated costs are usually tax deductible. According to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, that includes deductions for health insurance, Health Reimbursement Arrangements (HRAs), Section 125 deductions, paid leave, retirement plans, tuition reimbursement, and more.
In recent articles published by Investment News and Employee Benefit News, it was noted that more job recruitment postings now include information about available employee benefits. Some industry observers say it may be part of employers’ efforts to control costs – because benefits may be less expensive for businesses than raising wages.
While the Society for Human Resource Management said in a 2021 article that benefits are often an afterthought during recruitment, that is becoming less and less true. In multiple employee surveys, health insurance ranks among the benefits most valued by workers. BENEFITS PRO reported in February 2023 that two-thirds of employees believe it is the most important benefit.
Today employers are increasingly paying greater attention to the well-being of their workforce. As noted in the 2023 MetLife Employee Benefits Trends Study, “Even before the pandemic-driven economic lockdown of 2020, more organizations had come to recognize employee well-being as both an important responsibility and essential to effective business performance.”
Talk with your Word & Brown representative about the broad range of products and services that we offer to help you address the needs of your Large Group and Small Group clients. Both employer-sponsored coverage and voluntary coverage are available from an array of carriers and administrators.
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