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  • Construction companies continue to face ongoing recruitment and retention challenges, with the industry posting a 54% turnover rate. As a business owner in the construction industry, you have your hands full with completing client projects, overseeing supply inventory, and ensuring a safe worksite, making it difficult to develop and create retention policies. Although streamlining your internal operations can improve efficiency and help you manage your business, a strong and successful company starts with a healthy and happy workforce.

    Many business owners believe that the only way to retain employees is by offering them raises. However, this isn’t always possible for smaller or newer companies. Fortunately, there are other strategies to show appreciation for your workforce, which can enhance morale and productivity. Continue reading to discover four perks you can implement to attract new talent and retain your current employees.

    Provide a Benefits Package

    An expensive but necessary perk that business owners should consider offering is a health or benefits plan. While prices swing depending on the number of people on a plan, the amount of coverage needed, and the type of plan, the benefits far outweigh the costs. In fact, 78% of employees reported they’re more likely to stay with an employer because of their benefits program.

    Offering group health coverage can help cut down on overall costs and assist your employees with copays and other out-of-pocket charges. While a group health care plan might not make sense for your company’s needs, consider providing access to supplemental insurance plans. Offering access to vision, dental, home, and pet insurance can provide employees with tailored care specific to their needs, helping them save on health expenses with more coverage.

    Offer Professional Development Opportunities

    Another way to invest in your employees is to provide opportunities for professional growth. Whether through a mentorship program, online training, or attending industry-specific workshops, there are a variety of ways to help your employees grow their skillset. Investing in your employees’ individual growth not only expands the abilities of your workforce but also builds a relationship of trust and loyalty between employee and employer. A good rule of thumb is to continuously communicate with your workforce to gain a deeper understanding of the types of skills they want to learn or the type of programs they want to participate in.

    Invest in Workplace Culture

    Employees are more likely to stay at a company that makes them feel safe, heard, and valued. To cultivate a positive work environment, it’s important to prioritize employee well-being, encourage collaboration, and share team wins and successes. Employers can prioritize employee well-being by promoting flexible work schedules, offering paid time off (PTO), practicing open communication, and having weekly one-on-one meetings to tackle any issues or concerns. Hosting team-bonding events and encouraging interdepartmental interactions and projects are great ways to facilitate greater rapport among employees, which can lead to greater morale and retention. Employers should also consider actively recognizing achievements and group successes to showcase their trust in the team and their work.

    Implement Flexible Scheduling

    In today’s work landscape, schedule flexibility is increasingly important. Everyone’s schedule is different, and employees have different prime working hours and personal responsibilities. A tightly packed personal and professional calendar can take a toll on employees, so it’s important to implement strategies and perks to help them manage their time better. One way to do this is by offering telehealth options, so that your employees can spend less time at the doctor’s office or in the waiting room. This approach not only enables them to receive the personal care they need but also gives them extra time to handle their daily tasks, ultimately allowing them to invest more energy into their responsibilities at work.

    Business Retention and Group Management Services 

    Construction companies face unique challenges in recruitment and employee retention, but implementing effective strategies can make a significant difference. By offering comprehensive benefits packages, providing professional development opportunities, investing in workplace culture, and implementing flexible scheduling, business owners can create a supportive and engaging environment for their employees.

    Group Management Services (GMS) can assist in developing and executing these retention strategies. With our expertise in HR solutions, we can help tailor programs to meet the specific needs of your workforce, ensuring that your employees feel valued and motivated to stay with your company for the long term. Our team can also provide personalized assistance and training to help your company attract and retain talent to help bring your business to the next level. Contact us to learn more!

  • It’s no secret that health insurance is one of the most important employee benefits. Insurance is also one of the most expensive benefits, forcing small business owners to balance an attractive benefits plan with the costs of offering different medical plans.

    While it can be easy to focus on group health insurance, it’s essential to remember another critical benefit – dental insurance. Let’s break down what types of dental plans employers can offer and how they can benefit your small business.

    What Dental Insurance Options Are Available For Small Businesses?

    There are various options for employer-sponsored dental coverage available for small businesses. These types of dental insurance plans include:

    • Preferred provider organizations (PPO) – Users can visit a network of providers for dental care. Individuals will have co-payments for procedures and can meet a deductible.
    • Dental health maintenance organizations (DHMO) – Users pay their dental network a set monthly fee for preventative care whether they use it or not. A set amount of annual services are covered within that fee, while others require copays or are not covered.
    • Discount or savings plans – Users pay a monthly premium to receive discounts on dental services, whether they are in network or not.

    How Much Does Small Business Dental Insurance Cost For Employers?

    It’s no secret that offering certain benefits is an ample expense for small business owners. Group health insurance alone can cost a business thousands of dollars per employee as premiums continue to rise. Fortunately, dental insurance is a much smaller investment than some other types of benefits.

    As with group health coverage, the exact cost of dental insurance will change for each employer. Dental insurance costs typically vary from $15 to $20 per employee per month depending on the plan of choice and whether an employee needs single or family coverage. Several factors will affect your overall dental premiums, such as your group size, the overall wellness of that group, and other criteria. Once you have your per-employee premium, you can extrapolate that monthly rate to determine your annual expected dental insurance costs.

    Four Reasons Why Small Businesses Should Offer Dental Insurance

    Employees aren’t the only people who benefit from dental coverage. Below are four key reasons why group dental insurance is advantageous for both employers and their workers.

    Recruitment and retention

    According to MetLife’s 2022 Employee Benefit Trends Study, 72% of employees named dental insurance as a must-have benefit. That placed dental insurance as the third-most desired benefit behind group health insurance and a 401(k) or some other form of retirement savings.

    While small business group dental insurance isn’t required by law, it has become a staple for competitive benefits packages across the U.S. That makes offering dental insurance an important, relatively cost-effective benefit that can help your business attract and retain talent.

    Overall employee health

    Dental coverage does more than just help your employees address their oral health. Regular dental visits also play an important role in helping employees stay healthy from head to toe. According to the Mayo Clinic, poor oral health has been linked to several chronic diseases and other serious health issues, including:

    • Diabetes
    • Heart disease
    • Endocarditis
    • Stroke
    • Pneumonia
    • Osteoporosis
    • Pregnancy and birth complications

    By giving your employees the opportunity to receive regular cleanings and other dental care, you can help them maintain their overall health. Healthier employees tend to not only be happier employees but also people who are less likely to use their group health plans for various other ailments.

    An employee covered by small business dental insurance at a routine cleaning.

    Employee productivity and availability

    Simply put, employees who have to take more sick days are likely to be less productive than workers who are in good health. Offering dental insurance is another way that employers can support the overall health of their company.

    Even if your employees are able to come in and work while dealing with tooth pain and other issues, poor health can make employees less effective. Aches, pains, and stress can cause employees to lose focus on the job. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, personal and family health problems cost U.S. employers $1,685 per employee per year in productivity losses.

    Long-term savings

    Investing in dental insurance for a small business can make a direct impact on your bottom line. To start, healthier employees are less likely to take time off because they’re sick or for additional doctor’s appointments. That added productivity alone can help you get the most out of your workforce.

    Preventative treatment allows you to get ahead of health issues in the long run. Reducing an employee’s chances of developing more severe conditions can save you from costly claims and productivity losses in the future. Research published in the National Library of Medicine suggests that health-related productivity costs are 2.3 times greater on average than medical and pharmacy costs alone. That number alone can make the added investment worth bolstering your benefits plan.

    Help Your Employees Stay Healthy And Productive

    A healthy workforce is happier and more productive workforce. Giving your employees supplemental plan options such as dental insurance is one way that you can strengthen your business. Of course, it’s not always easy to manage benefits administration and every other critical HR function on your own.

    As a Professional Employer Organization (PEO), GMS can leverage its collective buying power to help you offer quality health care benefits at better, more affordable rates. We also give your business access to proprietary technology and dedicated customer service to save you valuable time that you can focus on your business.

    Ready to offer dental coverage to your employees? Contact GMS today to learn how we can help you get the most out of your benefits package.

  • Your small business’ benefits package takes on added importance as it gets harder and harder to attract and retain top talent. While group health insurance may dominate headlines in terms of what job seekers want in a new role, it’s not the only health care benefit employees want. 

    Ancillary insurance can play a pivotal role in making your workplace more enticing for both job candidates and current employees. However, some businesses may see supplemental benefits like dental and vision insurance as less important than other offerings. Let’s break down how ancillary insurance works and why your small business should offer these benefits.

    What are Ancillary Benefits?

    By definition, ancillary insurance is a secondary health care benefit that’s typically purchased in conjunction with major medical coverage. These supplemental benefits are meant to enhance your existing health coverage and give employees more support for their overall well-being. Employers can also offer ancillary insurance in a couple of different forms.

    • Voluntary benefits – Employees pay 100% of ancillary premiums, but have access to lower premiums by being part of a group plan as opposed to purchasing a policy as an individual.
    • Employer-contributory benefits – The employer pays at least half of the premiums.

    While dental, vision, and life insurance are the most well-known ancillary benefits, they’re not the only options for small businesses and their employees. Ancillary benefits can also include any of the following options to enhance your benefits package.

    • Long-term care
    • Cancer and critical illness
    • Hospital indemnity and intensive care
    • Accidental death policy
    • Long-term and short-term disability

    Why Small Businesses Should Offer Vision Insurance and Other Ancillary Benefits

    Simply put, employees care about ancillary insurance. One survey asked 2,000 people to choose between a higher-paying job and a position with more attractive benefits. A whopping 88% of those individuals said that they would consider taking a lower-paying job that had better health, dental, and vision insurance – and that doesn’t even take into account the other ancillary benefits that would make your benefits package even more enticing. 

    Adding ancillary insurance for your small business not only makes your benefits package more competitive, but also shows your employees that you care about them. A little peace of mind can go a long way, so giving your employees access to ancillary insurance can save them from worrying about getting contacts or scheduling their next dentist appointment. 

    That added emphasis on your employees’ well-being can also have a direct impact on the future of your business. Employees who feel valued and are happy at work are likely more willing and able to contribute to your company’s success. That increased employee engagement can lead to a plethora of benefits for your business, including:

    • Improved retention – Businesses with engaged employees reduced employee turnover by 90%, according to Gallup.
    • Increased productivity – That same Gallup report found that engaged employees were 17% more productive.
    • Reduced absenteeism – Gallup also learned that engaged employees missed work 37% percent less than unmotivated workers.
    • Greater profitability – According to Inc., a 10% increase in productivity can increase profits by $2,400 per employee per year.

    Another major advantage of offering ancillary benefits is that they can help your employees stay healthy. Vision insurance is a great example for this. Poor vision and eyestrain will not only negatively impact your employees health, they can have a direct impact on job performance as well. 

    According to the American Optometric Association, dry eye disease can reduce employee productivity by 20 to 25%. Offering vision insurance and other ancillary benefits can go a long way toward keeping your employees happy, healthy, and productive.

    Work with a PEO to Offer Competitive, Cost-Effective Ancillary Insurance

    Running a small business is no easy task. There are countless administrative burdens that rest on your shoulders, and managing your benefits offerings is one notable example. Fortunately, you don’t have to deal with employee benefits administration alone.

    Group Management Services works with small business owners to help them offer and manage quality benefits packages and save valuable time. As a Professional Employer Organization (PEO), our greater buying power allows you to offer competitively-priced group health plans and ancillary options on a mass level, even for at-risk employers or small groups.

    Partnering with GMS also means that you have a dedicated resource that’s here to help. We’re always looking for ways to improve your offerings, which is why we recently switched our vision provider to VSP to ensure that you and your employees have the perfect ancillary benefits for your business. In addition to our new vision provider, we continue to offer additional benefits to our clients, including Metlife Auto & Home coverage. We also have a team of experts on hand to answer your questions and guide your through any HR hurdles you may face in the future.

    Ready to make your business more competitive? Contact GMS today about how we can support you and your employees with ancillary insurance and other HR services. Already a GMS client? Contact your account manager to learn more about VSP and our vision plans.

  • Between offering competitive benefits and combating rising premiums, managing your business’ healthcare needs is a complex situation. Group health insurance plays a key part in attracting and retaining top talent. However, selecting and managing the right health plans for your company and employees takes an enormous amount of time and effort. It’s a delicate balancing act that can be difficult for any small business owner.

    Fortunately, you don’t need to go through this balancing act alone. A Professional Employer Organization (PEO) can not only help you offer quality, cost-effective healthcare benefits, but also give you the support necessary to develop benefits strategies and navigate any future changes. Let’s break down seven major reasons why a good PEO is a great choice for your small business’ health insurance.

    Cost savings from a PEO processing a claim for a small business’ health insurance plan. 

    Greater Buying Power

    It’s not easy dealing with health insurance companies directly. Policy administration and billing is not only difficult, but also expensive. For small and mid-sized businesses with fewer employees, you could end up being charged higher premiums because you simply don’t have the buying power of a bigger organization.

    That’s where PEOs can help. A PEO represents multiple organizations and all the employees hired by those groups. As such, PEOs can leverage their collective buying power to act as one large company. This arrangement means that small to mid-size companies working with a PEO can get the competitive benefits and smaller premiums of a big business, all thanks to a convenient partnership.

    Of course, your partnership with a PEO should be about more than just added buying power. You should also consider how the PEOs pool the participants and how it affects your premiums. For example, GMS represents tens of thousands of employees, but it does not pool all those employees together. Instead, GMS built our own plan designs.

    What does this arrangement mean for employers? Essentially, your company is rated for your own group based on your own demographic and your health instead of being grouped in with every other company. This process means that your premiums are dictated by your group’s rating, so you don’t need to settle for a lesser plan to see both short and long-term cost savings. With the right PEO, you can focus on cutting costs, not coverage.

    Ancillary Advantages

    Group health insurance isn’t the only benefit that PEOs can help deliver at competitive pricing. Greater buying power also allows PEOs to offer ancillary options on a mass level. This arrangement is especially advantageous for certain groups where certain ancillary benefits would be cost-prohibitive or even unattainable. 

    For example, imagine you ran a small roofing company. A lot of times, your SIC code serves as the basis for your rate. Because of this, you may not be able to get disability coverage at a reasonable cost through traditional means. However, a PEO’s group buying power can give at-risk employers or small groups cost-effective access to multiple lines of coverage, healthcare, and ancillary benefits.

    Benefits and Payroll Under the Same Roof

    Organizationally, it’s a huge benefit to have healthcare and payroll administration talking to one another through the administrative systems. Non-PEOs typically have a payroll processor or some other system and need someone to manually enter healthcare rates for a new employee or during renewal. When it’s all under one roof, you have one group handling everything instead of needing two different entities to hopefully stay in sync.

    With a PEO, your payroll and healthcare administration have the means to work with one another through the systems and streamline this process. Automatic payroll deductions are set up when your benefits kick in for new hires or at open enrollment. The two systems will also be able to automate paycheck deductions and identify which items should be pre-tax and which shouldn’t.

    By having both payroll and healthcare administration working together, you do more than just streamline the process. This scenario lessens the amount of manual entry required, which frees you or a key employee up for other tasks. Automating the process can also help eliminate potential data error – humans make mistakes, after all. In addition, having payroll and benefits administrators work together allows a PEO to directly resolve any issues for you instead of having you involved in every step of the process.

    Online Enrollment

    Another advantage of having payroll and benefits together is that it allows for online enrollment. The automated system of a PEO can help guide employees during the renewal process and educate them about the products they can elect. Since healthcare and payroll administration is tied together, the online enrollment process allows employees to see exactly how their choices impact them in terms of coverage and pricing. 

    From there, employees can confirm their selections right then and there without ever needing any paper documents. This situation simplifies the process for not only the employees, but also you and any office administrators who would have to deal with the headaches associated with enrollment documents. With a PEO, that’s all generated for the employee to handle and deal with, saving you time and plenty of frustration.

    Audit and Process Claims for You

    Depending on the PEO you choose, these organizations can offer another key benefit: auditing and processing claims for you. While some vendors utilize the fully-insured market and Affordable Care Act plans, this scenario can leave your company at the mercy of the providers. Instead, it’s better to partner with all major insurance providers and provide a better experience for small businesses.

    How can a PEO do this? At GMS, we built our own plan with internal administration to give us more control over that plan and the costs. This arrangement gives us the ability to audit and process all our own claims. In this process, your PEO can make sure that the usual customary rate was charged or fight on your behalf to get a discount or reduction on that claim. 

    The ability to audit claims also opens up opportunities to find other ways to save. Part of the audit is used to analyze how the individuals in your group use your plan. The results of this analysis can indicate certain trends that add avoidable costs – for example, using telemedicine services for free doctor’s calls to avoid copays. Not only will this analysis educate your group on the best, most cost-effective way to utilize the plan, it will also help you save in the long run.

    Free Administration

    If you were to turn to an accountant or lawyer with compliance, legal, or administration questions, that extra time will typically cost you. That’s a very unfortunate arrangement for a business owner. Rules and regulations change every day, so it’s only natural to have some inquiries about how they can impact your business. You also can’t be expected to know everything about healthcare and payroll administration – that’s why people train specifically for those fields. 

    With most PEOs, the time spent answering those questions is covered as part of your main fees. Not only that, but you’ll also have a team of experts on hand to answer whatever questions pop up about healthcare, payroll, or other administrative needs. You get the answers you need, without the fear of having those questions affect your bottom line.

    Ability to Lighten Other Administrative Burdens

    When you run a business, there are a multitude of administrative burdens that rest on your shoulders. A PEO is a tremendous solution for companies that don’t have the time or expertise to effectively manage more than group health insurance.

    While you can turn to a PEO for just health insurance and payroll, an organization like GMS can help you easily take additional administrative burdens off your shoulders when you’re ready. This gives you the ability to have one team expertly run risk management, employee recruiting, and other key HR functions as your company grows.

    Ready to simplify your business’ administrative needs? Contact GMS today to talk to our experts about small business health insurance today.