Employee Benefits
Why Consider Employee Benefits?
Besides wanting to treat your employees well and making sure they are in the best of health, employee benefits plans have numerous advantages:
Benefits help attract and retain high-quality employees. Potential employees frequently look at the provisions of a benefits plan as a criterion for accepting a position.
Having healthy employees results in increased productivity and reduced absenteeism. This mitigates a portion of the cost of providing the benefits plan.
Benefits are a tax efficient way to increase a compensation package for both the employee and the employer. There are no requirements to pay into CPP or EI and the employee gets tax free medical benefits.
Provides increased morale to your employees.
Traditional Benefits Plan
Traditional benefit plans are very common and can cover drugs, extended health benefits, life insurance, accidental death and dismemberment, short and long term disability, out of country and dental. Typically, these plans outline specific benefit coverage with set benefit amounts that may include deductibles and coinsurance. Benefits are usually mandatory, except extended health and dental, which can be waived if benefits are available through a spouse or significant other.
Traditional plans are analyzed annually and the premium can increase or decrease depending on the demographics of your organization, health care inflation for the year, and whether the previous year’s claims exceeded what was expected.
Health Spending Account
A Health Spending Account is similar to a bank account, and is often used as a supplement or alternative to a traditional benefit plan. The accounts are tax-free, and designed to provide a way to provide for the health care of the account holder and his/her dependent family members. The account is flexible, and there is no set plan design.
Employer is able to cap their costs, as opposed to a traditional plan which can see premium rate increases
Employees have more flexibility as to what expenses they want reimbursed, and reimbursements are received tax-free
Most health spending account plans allow for the unused balance to be rolled over to the subsequent year, and any unused balance in the second year is returned to employer. Learn more about Health Spending Accounts
Combination Plan
It is not uncommon to integrate a traditional plan with a Health Spending Account, which can reduce the premium of the traditional plan while still providing coverage to employees. This also serves to provide more options for employees, since they are able to allocate certain amounts to their individual health care priorities.
Example: Removing dental and vision from a plan and implementing a $500 Health Spending Account.