6 ‘benefits’ to having group employee benefits
What are ‘group employee benefits’? You might have heard of ‘group life insurance’, which Investopedia describes as “a single contract for life insurance coverage that extends to a group of people”.
By buying life insurance for its employees in this way, rather than sourcing an individual policy for each employee, the employer can make significant cost savings – and various other employee benefits are available on a ‘group’ basis, as the CIPD explains. So, what would be good examples?
Health insurance
Naturally, as an employee, you wouldn’t want to find yourself struck with a medical bill you can’t figure out how to pay. Therefore, if you are an employer instead, you should seriously consider adding health insurance to the group benefits package you offer to employees.
The Forbes website describes two very popular health insurance schemes you could particularly consider: HMOs (health maintenance organisations) and PPOs (preferred provider organisations).
Vision plans
This type of insurance would come into play when an employee visits an optometrist or ophthalmologist to either utilise services like eye exams or source such items as eyeglasses or contact lenses.
While many employers might notice vision plans often being included alongside general health insurance plans, it is also possible to purchase vision plans separately.
Dental coverage
This, too, is often available in addition to a general health insurance plan. Basically, dental insurance can help employees to fund an array of dental care treatments.
Examples of these treatments they tend to cover – no it bears emphasis that dental plans vary in their exact coverage – include basic cleanings, fillings, periodontics and endodontics. Some dental plans also stretch to covering parts of oral surgery, implants, crowns or dentures.
Group life insurance
This works by providing money to the family of someone who has passed away while employed by the company.
If that person had financial dependents, like offspring or elderly relatives, then a payout from a group life insurance policy can help to ease the financial blow that could have been inflicted upon them due to the death.
YuLife is one example of a company from which an employer might source group benefits and life insurance.
401K plans
Here is how a 401K plan works: employees put a portion of their pre-tax income into a qualified plan while they are still working for the company. Later down the line, when the employee retires, they will be granted funds from this plan.
The employee would not have to pay any tax on the income they invest in the plan, and many employers agree to make a matching contribution to the plan.
Disability (short- and long-term)
If you develop a disability that prevents you from being able to work, then you would be reassured to have either short-term or long-term disability insurance close at hand.
Either type of insurance can help the disabled employee to close a gap that might have opened up in their finances as a result of the disability emerging. Unsurprisingly, though, the long-term insurance can pay out over a lengthier period of time.