What are ‘Voluntary Benefits?

Voluntary benefits are also known as supplemental benefits. These are insurance products that employees can choose to add to fill gaps in their health, accident, and disability insurance needs. Voluntary benefits are offered by employers but are paid completely or mostly by employees through payroll deductions.

What type of Voluntary Insurance Benefits are available?

There’s a huge range of voluntary insurance plans available in the market. Traditional insurance products in this category include life insurance, vision, dental, disability, critical illness, cancer and accident insurance. As the needs of employees change based on their lifestyle changes, some of the non-traditional benefits are also now widely available. These include insurance for identify theft, legal, financial counseling and student loan repayment.

How employers benefit from Voluntary Benefits Program?

Voluntary benefits are appealing to employees because they offer flexibility to choose their benefits as per their needs and are able to realize savings by paying premiums using pre-tax dollars. Employers are also able to benefit from these plans and here is how:

• No Costs Directly to Employers: Employers can offer voluntary benefits at no direct cost to themselves, as the employees are paying the premiums through payroll deductions.
  
  
• Address Insurance Gaps: Voluntary benefits can help employers fill in gaps in traditional employer-paid benefits such as health and disability insurance. For example, an accident and cancer insurance plan can cover many of the out-of-pocket costs that the employer health insurance plan doesn’t pay.
  
  
• Addressing Changing Insurance Needs: Voluntary benefits allow employers to provide additional benefits that employees, especially newer generation employees, need per their lifestyles. Student loan repayment and identity theft insurance are good examples. 
  
  
• Attracting and Retaining Talent: Voluntary benefit plans help smaller businesses compete and differentiate from larger competitors. By providing a Voluntary Benefits Program the employer offers a more robust benefit program that way to attract and retain employee talent.

Contact us today to discuss how we can design the right healthcare solution for your organization in today’s rapidly changing environment.