Wiegers Financial & Benefits is one of Saskatchewan’s largest private financial planning and group benefits consulting firms. More than ever, employees are choosing employers who care, and a custom-designed Group Life and Health benefits plan that helps look after your employees is one of the foundational components of a competitive rewards and compensation strategy that will attract and retain strong talent over the long-term. Here, Benefits Account Manager, Amanda Getzlaf, shares some key points about how your company’s benefits plan does double-duty by helping to look after your employees while it helps your employees’ families too. It’s a big deal, and here’s why.
Life Insurance is the Gold Standard for Helping Ensure Future Financial Security
When most people think about how to protect their family’s financial security, life insurance tends to come to mind. This makes a lot of sense. Insurance that pays out a lump sum benefit to your beneficiaries when you die is the most effective way to help ensure that no matter what happens, they’ll be financially secure. When an individual wants to purchase life insurance, they typically contact an insurance representative who then conducts an analysis to determine how much life insurance is needed (hint: it’s likely more than you would think). The representative then applies to one or more insurance carriers for the insurance. If approved, and if the individual pays their life insurance premiums on time each month, this important protection will be in place.
Your Company’s Benefits Plan Helps Your Employees’ Families Too
Life Insurance
What a lot of people don’t realize is that the group benefits plan you provide your employees likely includes a number of benefits that also help your employees’ families. Odds are, for example, that your benefits plan includes a life insurance benefit that amounts to a flat amount or a multiple of each employee’s gross annual income. Part or all of the benefit is likely guaranteed regardless of the employee’s health, which is clearly important for anyone whose health makes them uninsurable on their own. A group life insurance benefit can amount to a relatively significant benefit, though for most people, it is not enough on its own to adequately look after their loved ones financially. A qualified advisor will want to include a person’s group life insurance benefit in a thorough analysis of how much insurance they have, and how much is still needed.
Disability Insurance
Beyond the life insurance you likely provide in your company’s group benefits plan are other benefits that directly or indirectly help your employees’ families. Most plans, for example, include short and long-term disability insurance. This insurance pays a benefit each week (in the case of short term disability) or each month (in the case of long term disability) when an employee becomes disabled and is unable to work for an income. This is as beneficial for your employees as it is for their families, given that most families cannot sustain the loss of an income for even a short period of time. When you consider that group disability insurance – unlike Workers’ Compensation Insurance – covers disabilities sustained both on and off the job, the financial security it affords your employees and their families becomes even more apparent.
Health and Dental Benefits
Most group benefit plans include more than just insurance that benefits the employees’ families. Plans that include Health, Prescription Drug and/or Dental benefits, for example, almost always include coverage (or the option for coverage) for each employee’s dependent spouse and/or children. And in cases when an employee dies when he or she still has coverage under a group benefits plan, there is usually a survivor benefit. This benefit continues to afford the employee’s dependents with coverage for one or two years following the death with no insurance premiums required.
Beyond Core Benefits
In order to really stand out as an employer who cares, you have options to take your benefits plan beyond what’s become standard and, in the process, help improve your competitive position in the labour market. As just one example, you can supplement your company’s benefits plan with a Health Spending Account and/or Personal Spending Account as a means to providing your employees and their families with flexible benefit dollars. You can add an Employee and Family Assistance Plan (EAFP) to provide a number of important services, including but not limited to counselling. You can add Critical Illness Insurance coverage to your plan – either as a mandatory or voluntary benefit – that provides a lump sum financial benefit to an insured person diagnosed with a covered critical illness. There are other benefit options too that your group benefits advisor should recommend or at least advise you about so you can make the most informed and impactful decision for your own team.
Really, then, by helping to take care of your employees with a group benefits plan, you’re helping take care of their families too. At a time when employees are in the position to choose where they want to work, and when working for an employer who actively demonstrates care and concern for their employees is non-negotiable, it’s important you make clear what you do for your team. To learn more, please contact us.
Amanda Getzlaf
Benefits Account Manager, Wiegers Financial and Insurance Planning Services Ltd.