How to Customize Your Benefits Plan to Get the Most Value
Finding the right benefits plan to offer your staff can be a real challenge. Contrary to what you might believe, however, you don’t simply have to choose between a costly fully comprehensive plan and nothing at all. Creating a customized benefits plan for your business is often the best way to support your employees without breaking the bank. This is especially true for smaller organizations, where the economies of scale needed to make certain benefits cost-effective are simply not present.
What Makes a Good Benefits Plan?
At its root, any good benefits plan has to strike a balance between offering the best coverage while still retaining long-term sustainability. For instance, choosing options like mental health, dental benefits, and group savings plans can provide value to your employees, while still costing less than other options, like chronic illness medication coverage.
Deciding which of these types of coverage you should offer comes down to answering two questions. First, will you be able to continue affording them year after year? Second, what does your staff actually need? An expert broker can help you reevaluate your current plan or create a new one from scratch to come up with the ideal benefits strategy for your business.
The Value of Customized Benefits
In the words of celebrated business consultant Peter Drucker, “There is nothing quite so useless as doing with great efficiency something that should not be done at all.” This is just as true when it comes to choosing a benefits plan as in any other area of your business.
Often, business owners are sold coverage that’s not in line with their employee’s needs, just because it’s a “good deal.” Having a long list of benefits may seem attractive, but even relatively inexpensive options come at a cost that could otherwise be put towards coverage that truly helps your staff.
While it is possible to take personalized benefits too far, understanding and catering to your staff’s needs lets you ensure that every dollar you spend on group benefits is making a difference. Ultimately, your goal should be to invest your budget into a benefits plan that genuinely increases employee satisfaction and productivity.
Creating and Implementing Your Customized Benefits Plan
The first step toward creating a fully optimized and customized benefits package is to understand the types of coverage available. Despite paying top dollar, many employers have a pretty vague understanding of how their benefits plans actually work.
An experienced group benefits broker can not only walk you through your options but also help assess your current benefits spending to determine where you can save money without sacrificing coverage.
Even once you’ve chosen a benefits plan, implementing and maintaining it can be a challenge — especially if you don’t have a dedicated HR staff to handle it. Fortunately, your broker can also help you implement your plan. Not only does this save you time, but it also helps you avoid potentially costly mistakes such as missing your enrollment window.
Optimize Your Benefits Plan with Zarmac
Reap the benefits of a full, comprehensive benefits package without paying more than you can afford. Zarmac’s Employee Benefits Simplifier™ provides a comprehensive platform for reporting, assessment, and evaluation to make sure you’re getting the most out of your plan.
Zarmac Benefits has been providing benefit programs to both new and established businesses for over 20 years. We take the time to analyze what you need and customize a benefits package specifically for your business style, now and for the future.
Zarmac provides critical analysis specific to your business to deliver real choices, advise on trends, streamline renewals, and optimize your plan design. We make it easy for you and your team by supporting the management of your program. We also proactively educate and eliminate questions to ensure there are no surprises.
Ready to protect your business and your team? Find out more about the Zarmac difference!