Business Owners! Interested in Saving 10% and Attracting More Talent??

I was reading an article recently that said one of the top three biggest concerns of business owners in the marketplace today is finding AND retaining top talent. Maybe you can relate and maybe you can't. But growing your business is the name of the game, and if the amazing people that are helping you do it don't stick around, or you can't attract them in the first place, it's going to be a constant frustration and headache.

So business owners (especially those with small to mid-sized companies) will look for different types of competitive advantages that will help them with this goal of finding and retaining these people. As soon as they start going down this path, they will start to discover some important concerns that they need to seriously consider. Here are 3 of the most common:

Issue #1 - They have absolutely no idea where to start. Who do I call? What am I looking for? How do these things even work?

Issue #2 - We have such a wide range of people. Older vs. younger. People with families vs. singles. How we can find something that appeals to everyone and bring true value for them and us?

Issue #3 - How much is this going to cost? We're in a pretty good spot, but we also don't want to start going backwards, we've worked too hard to get to the stable spot we're at.

These are all legitimate concerns and in a lot of cases they keep business owners from implementing any sort of group plan. There is a huge drop-off in the number of group plans in companies with under 100 employees. As the size of a company decreases in terms of number of employees, so do the number of companies that have a plan in place. So let's consider each of the above issues in turn and maybe it can clear up some of the fog around group benefit plans.

Issue #1 - The best place to start is to reach out to an experienced advisor who can walk you through the whole process. They know the questions to ask to help you figure out what you need. The key is to just start the process, otherwise it will never happen. If you don't know where to reach such an advisor, ask another business owner for a referral to who they are using. If they have been happy with their provider, you likely will be too. They may even be able to save you some time by picking someone good right out of the gate.

You may have a dream list of what you want provided for your employees and that's a good place to start. But rank each item in order of importance to you, because when it comes to Issue #3, that's where you may have to trim and streamline the final choices.

Issue #2 - Here I would suggest actually doing an informal poll of your employees to find out what is important to them. It can help you form a general consensus instead of just assuming. They likely won't know exact amounts of features to expect anyway, but if you can deliver something they have expressed interest in, you are listening to your employees and building goodwill. And what your current employees are interested in is probably going to match what future employees are looking for.

The reality is that many benefit plans today have tons of flexibility to mix and match different features and raise or lower amounts to address many of the items that you are looking for in a plan. A good advisor is going to help you figure this out and simplify things as much as possible, especially when it comes to all the terminology. You could also start small and add things later as the company grows. You want a plan that is sustainable after making this kind of commitment and not have to remove the plan because you "bit off more than you can chew" because you wanted all the "bells and whistles" right away. Which leads to.....

Issue #3 - A business owner has to seriously consider what they can realistically afford. Figure out what the number is for you. You can't put the long-term future of the business in jeopardy by starting out too big. But again, due to how much flexibility there is with plans today, you can do something for pretty much every budget imaginable. Employees appreciate there at least being some sort of a plan and it can definitely influence their final decision when choosing employment.

To give you an idea, I have seen a plan for a newer company of only 4 employees start out with a very basic plan that provided a few essentials for only about $350 per month. That plan was from a provider in the industry that has been around forever and has very competitive pricing.

That same provider was able to replace a group plan for a large company with hundreds of employees. ALL the features remained the same but they were able to reduce the overall investment by 10%, which in this case amounted to about $600,000 in savings. That went straight to the "bottom line" for this company. As you can imagine, they were quick to ask "Where do we sign?" So it makes a lot of sense to be working with an independent advisor who can shop the plan to find the best deal for you.

Always happy to chat, and it it makes sense, help steer you in the right direction. Feel free to reach out for a free consult at (403)852-7816.

Warm regards,

Jay