Inflation has become a top economic concern for most Canadians after a significant and sudden increase in prices in the past months on everything, including basic necessities of food and housing. For your business, inflation is compounded by high gas prices, supply chain issues, and increased labour costs – causing concerns for your bottom-line.
To help your balance sheet with these challenges, you may be considering reductions in the benefits you offer employees. But we recommend that you don’t overreact by cutting health benefits altogether. Here are a few reasons why.
Health insurance is a long-term investment in your business
Maintaining health benefits during inflation isn’t just key to providing stability for employees, it is key to your business’ stability. Providing health benefits for employees is critical to your success in attracting and retaining employees, especially in a challenging labour market.
During inflationary times, your employees may actively seek out ways to increase their income – including seeking alternate employment. If you depend on employees with specialised knowledge and skills, the competitiveness of your benefits packages greatly influences your ability to retain your top talent, avoiding recruitment and replacement expenses. A great health benefits package will increase your chances of retaining the people you depend on.
If you are concerned that employees may leave for higher paying jobs, the fact is many employees will accept a lower paying job with the possibility of advancement as long as the company offers a great health insurance package. They will stay with you when they know they have a health plan safety guard against out-of-pocket healthcare costs for themselves and their families.
Health insurance helps you nurture your team and save them money
When it comes to health insurance, remember that during periods of financial stress, your employees are more at risk than ever when faced with out-of-pocket costs for personal and family healthcare not covered by a government health plan.
Adjusting your health benefits strategy to help foster a healthy workforce in inflationary times can help your employees address health care affordability. Health insurance also plays an important role in creating a positive workplace environment when you use it to promote a healthy workforce, improving morale and productivity.
Here are just some of the features in health insurance that help
Telemedicine
Taking time off to go to the doctor can often be a time-consuming and expensive undertaking. Telemedicine may help lessen these issues for your employees by eliminating associated costs, such as transportation, and providing faster care to those seeking medical services. By meeting with health care providers over the internet, employees can get the care they need more quickly which allows employees to take less time off work and makes it much easier for them to avoid obstacles that could get in the way of seeking health care, such as childcare.
Support to improve health condition management
Your employee health insurance plan includes the use of targeted programs aimed at specific health conditions, like diabetes and musculoskeletal pain. Insurance plans offer online support for nutrition, fitness, and stress management, which can help your employees live healthier.
And if your employee or their family members does need medical care, they can depend on health insurance to absorb some or all of the cost of mobility aids, nursing, dental care, prescription drugs and therapy.
There is no one solution to the problem of inflation – but health insurance helps
Given the economic outlook today, there will never be a better time to offer health insurance to your employees – for them and your business. Choosing the right plan for your small business can be challenging; that’s why at SBIS, we go to work to help you put it in to place.
Our online shopping experience helps you:
- Shop for multiple insurance plans
- Compare multiple plans based on insurer
- Receive online quotes
- Purchase insurance plans online.
If your group is growing, at SBIS we can help you take a look at getting different prices for health insurance coverage. To manage your health benefits outlay, consider a ‘hybrid’ health solution that combines your group coverage and help employees ‘top up’ with their own individual health plan. And remember, by paying for individual health plans for your employees it is usually less expensive than a group plan.
Not ready to provide your team with health benefits at all? You can still help them out by encouraging them to get their own plans.
If you or your employees have never had to purchase health coverage before, you can talk to one of our experts. We have options to fit your budget and needs, with almost 50 different health and dental plans to choose from with features like lifetime renewable coverage for every type of employee aged 18 and over, no matter their occupation.
If you refer your employees to our website, they can see all that we have to offer. We can also send you some brochures and reading material to provide for your staff so they can see for themselves. All you have to do is make the introduction!
Once an employee calls us, we find out exactly what they are looking for and what kind of coverage they can afford. As the employer, you won’t need to spend time explaining benefits and coverage to employees. You can show them who we are and suggest that they contact us to set them up. We offer plans for all walks of life, so everyone walks away happy.
We’re ready to answer your questions. Just give us a call Monday to Friday 8:45 a.m. – 4:45 p.m. Eastern Time at 1-800-667-0429 or 416-601-0429 or go online to discover the wide range of small group and individual health and dental insurance options we offer.
