Hands Off Employee Benefits Administration With One Partner

Offering employee benefits comes with the burden of educating employees on the details of those benefits, making sure the benefit plans are in line with employee needs, knowing when employees can and cannot make changes, collecting all the enrollment information, and making sure the information is appropriately communicated to the carriers and payroll team for setup of deductions. All of that must be executed in compliance with strict rules of the IRS to ensure employees are treated fairly and adequately cared for.

The average cost of group medical insurance can vary significantly due to various main factors such as:

• The size of the company
• The location of the company and its employees
• The age of the employees
• The level of coverage provided
• The insurance carrier

On average, the cost of employee-only medical insurance can range from a few hundred dollars up to several hundred dollars per month. 

According to the Affordable Care Act, employers who have 50 full-time employees, or 50 full-time equivalents are mandated by law to offer health insurance to their employees. Employers must be able to prove when an employee became eligible for insurance, if the employee denied or accepted coverage, and the benefit insurance must be affordable according to ACA requirements.

In reality, employers have a lot of flexibility as to what benefit options they can offer their employees. Employees can create "classes" of employees that may differentiate from other "classes" within their organization (i.e. management / non-management classes). However, there are a few areas which you might decide to offer different benefits to different employees.

Non-Discrimination Laws: These laws prohibit employers from discriminating against employees based on protected characteristics such as age, race, gender, disability, or other factors when offering benefits. Best practice is to offer the same benefit to each "like" employee meaning that if someone is a manager, for example, you must offer that person the same benefit options as other managers.

Employee Retention/Morale: Let's face it -  Employees talk. It will not take long for employees to know that certain classes of employees are receiving different benefits. Though there is nothing wrong with offering different benefits to different classes of employees (when done correctly), you need to think about retention and employee morale. Offering better benefits for those employees in higher positions could, however, be used as an advantage in inspiring employees to progress into these types of positions.

Compliance: All regulatory and compliance measures must be met when offering different types of benefits to specific employees. Some areas of focus would be the size of the organization, ERISA, highly compensated individuals, etc.