Leadership and HR teams can take their benefits to the next level when they begin strategically planning their benefits rather than just buying insurance every renewal cycle. And in order to think strategically with benefits, companies need to review an Employee Benefits Benchmark for their organization.

What is an Employee Benefits Benchmark?

An Employee Benefits Benchmark compares insurance plans, policies, contributions, and costs against those of similar companies. A good comparison includes companies in a similar industry, size, and geographic region in order to yield the best results.

Why should you benchmark your employee benefits?

Employers use Employee Benefits Benchmarks to determine how competitive their benefits are compared to their peers and competitors. Their findings can inform their benefits renewal by telling them if they need to change contributions, plans, or policies to better recruit and retain employees.

If you don’t evaluate your employee benefits through a strategic lens like this, you’ll likely offer ineffective benefits and spend inefficiently on your insurance and benefits. When every industry is becoming more and more competitive, can you expect to survive and thrive when offering subpar benefits and struggling to recruit and retain workers?

How do companies use an Employee Benefits Benchmark?

By reviewing an Employee Benefits Benchmark, you can uncover potential plan savings, enhancements for employees, additional benefits to offer, and other uncompetitive policies that lead to issues around recruiting and retaining employees.

You may find that your employees have a much higher contribution for family coverage than peers, which will impact your ability to recruit for leadership positions.

You may realize that you need to offer another plan type to give employees a thorough choice of plans during Open Enrollment.

What’s included in an Employee Benefits Benchmark?

A quality Employee Benefits Benchmark will incorporate your existing employee benefits plans and policies and compare them to those of similar companies. It will consider aspects of your benefits such as:

• Plan types like HMO, PPO, and HDHP
• Employer and employee contributions
• Plan design like deductibles, copays, and out-of-pocket maximums
• Levels of benefit for life and disability insurance
• Days available of leave, including paid leave, unpaid family leave, and paid family leave or PFL
• Contribution and vesting for retirement plans
• Existence of other benefits like financial planning and student loan repayment

Many companies struggle to plan adequately around their benefits because they simply renew their insurance programs. Rather, they can think more strategically about benefits within their organization by reviewing an Employee Benefits Benchmark with their team and their consultant.

Click here if you’d like to request an Employee Benefits Benchmark report or Benchmark Template from one of our consultants!

Posted by John Hansbrough in Benefits Administration, Business Strategies, Employee Benefits, Employee Experience, Health Insurance, Human Resources, Leadership, Open Enrollment, Self-Funding, Trending Topics