5 simple tips to keep in mind while selecting health benefits for your employees

A comprehensive health benefits plan can help you retain your best employees, attract new talent, and enhance productivity and job satisfaction at your workplace. Showing that you care for your employees can also strengthen your overall brand. So, it’s important to select the right benefits and maximize these effects on your organization. The right health benefits must supplement your team’s personal health goals without heavy administrative costs to you. Here are 5 simple tips to keep in mind while selecting health benefits for your employees:

• Understand your team well: Before you kickstart, It’s essential to understand your team well – the number of employees, their average age, health conditions, the type of health and wellness facilities they seek, and their personal health goals. It might be helpful to conduct surveys to get direct feedback on the needs of your team. Further, it would serve you well to research the best health benefits practices and trends in the market. If you care for your team and want to maximize the effects of your health benefits, try and aim to be above the average conventions.
• Set a strong foundation: A solid health insurance plan is the foundation on which you can build your health benefits. Once you know your team well, it becomes simpler to make choices around your health insurance. For example, a young team in their early 20s cohort may not need extensive coverage and add-ons unlike a team in the mid 30s cohort with children and ageing parents. 
  Covering an employee’s family with comprehensive health insurance is the best health benefit you can offer to show how much you value them, but this gesture does come at a cost. Further, if you believe in building a diverse and inclusive workplace, including LGBTQ partners in your plan must be on your health benefits checklist. A group health insurance expert can help you with the finer details of insurance, like the calculations, combinations, and terms and conditions. 
• Choose relevant health benefits: Your employee health insurance plan will reactively cover your team’s healthcare and illness needs. A proactive health benefits plan today can include doctor teleconsultations, dental checkups, vision care, mental wellness and therapy, gym, yoga and fitness memberships, diet and nutritional coaching, sexual health education, discounted medicines, and other well-being benefits that are adapted to your team’s specific needs. 

You can make good choices based on your team’s age cohort and needs as mentioned earlier. For example, a startup with a young cohort would place a premium on mental wellness and therapy aimed at affordable access and resources to deal with stress and burnout. Gym and fitness memberships may also be a key retention tool for a young team. An older, middle-aged cohort may prefer convenient doctor teleconsultations and discounted medicines for themselves and their families over the latest fitness trends. Please note that these are broad assumptions, ultimately you must make your own conclusions based on feedback from your team.

Think about administrative costs and life beyond: The best things don’t come easy. You must consider the time, money, and effort it takes to make your health benefits plan a success. You’ll need to create awareness of your benefits and encourage its use. It will be hard to pull this off without the right expertise. So, it’s highly recommended to consult with modern health insurance providers and wellness services who help businesses build their health benefits. Today, startups in the health benefits space like Plum offer user-friendly tech interfaces to easily build and manage your team’s health insurance and benefits like doctor teleconsultations, dental care, mental health benefits and even offer curated wellness sessions. The right health benefits provider can save you and your team countless hours of administrative pain.

Know that there is no one-size-fits-all solution: Every team is different. A health benefits plan that works for a huge MNC might not be right, or readily available, for a budding start-up. You can still build a comprehensive health benefits plan that’s relevant for your team in many ways. Look for recommendations from your industry and talk to health insurance and employee wellness experts to help you make the best decision.