Food For Thought:
What would your employees say is the most important benefit you offer? A retirement plan? A generous PTO program? Health insurance?
According to a recent survey of over 1600 employees in large US companies, seventy five percent said that their health insurance plan is the important benefit, compared to fourteen percent who identified their retirement package as the most important benefit. The survey also showed that most employees would not reduce the amount of health benefits in order to increase benefits in other areas, such as retirement savings.
Some other interesting points from the survey, which highlight just how important health benefits are to employees:
- About three in four employees would prefer to get health benefits through their employer rather than getting additional salary to purchase their own.
- Most employees (83%) would rather see their salary or retirement benefit reduced rather than health benefits if their employer need to reduce total compensation
“The fact that so many employees are opposed to giving up any aspect of their health benefits, even in return for an improvement in other benefits, speaks volumes as to just how important they are from a worker and employer perspective,” says Helen Darling, President of the National Business Group on Health, the non-profit association of 266 large companies that released the survey findings. “As the labor market tightens, employers will need to place an increased emphasis on their health benefits if they want to be able to compete for talented workers.”
Source:
The national online survey was conducted in February, 2007, by Mathew Greenwald & Associates, Inc., on behalf of the National Business Group on Health. A total of 1,619 randomly selected workers participated in the survey. To participate, workers had to be age 22-69, be covered by their employer’s health plan, currently work for an employer with at least 2,500 employees and be a decision-maker in their household regarding health care. The margin of error is plus or minus 2.5 percentage points.
