Include your Employees in Benefit Decisions

RCS Influencers Seth and Ashley Pietsch say that offering benefits can help keep and attract employees.

Working in insurance has allowed us to help many contractors build benefit programs for their employees. It can be intimidating when thinking about starting a benefits program, especially for a small business owner, but remember to take it one step at a time.

The important reason to start out small is that you risk becoming overwhelmed if you try to offer a full menu of benefits to your team. Many contractors feel like they need to offer a huge package and then end up having to take some away, which can leave a negative feeling among your employees.

Employees are typically most interested in health insurance benefits, so consider starting there. It can be very difficult to cover 100 percent of the cost but consider contributing a percentage. Maybe as the employer, you can cover half and the employee can contribute the other half through pre-tax payroll contributions.

Remember to include your team in the decisions. Ask them what is most important to them in terms of benefits. As mentioned earlier, health insurance is typically the top priority. Every year when health insurance renews, have conversations with your employees ahead of time to see what matters most – lower premiums, higher deductibles, etc.? This shows them that they are valued and have worth to your company and can prevent them from leaving to work for another contractor that they perceive offers better benefits.

If you need to get started with offering insurance benefits to your team, it’s important to talk to a broker. For instance, at our company, Integrity Insurance & Bonding Inc., we have close relationships with an agency that has a specialization in construction and can provide access to construction-specific plans.

A broker has access to the many different programs and can help you identify the best plans that meet the needs of your company and your employees.

Seth Pietsch is the president of Integrity Insurance & Bonding Inc. (see his full bio here) and Ashley Pietsch is the vice president (see her full bio here).