Roisin Lyons of Lyons Financial Services discusses how health insurance can play a role in helping you retain your best people.

As the economy has picked up and businesses are growing again, one of the biggest challenges facing employers is attracting and retaining the best people. While salary levels are obviously very important to people, employers are finding more and more that having a broader employee benefits package is essential to building a strong team.

One important element of this is corporate health-insurance plans. These come in all shapes and sizes and can be paid for totally by the employer, partially paid by the employer or indeed simply facilitated by the employer. There are lots of factors to be considered such as the benefits required by employees, whether family members are included and the cost of plans.

We’re also at that time of year again when nearly 50% of healthinsurance customers are getting ready for their upcoming policy renewal in January. Many employers will simply renew without really thinking about it to any great extent – the health-insurance providers are delighted when this happens! However, this is a time when you can add a lot of value for your employees.

Use a health-insurance adviser

Many large employers, in both the public and the private sector now utilise the services of advisers to cut through the complexity of the market. The adviser will help you identify your employee benefit objective, your budget, your company’s own level of financial contribution and, with all of this information, they will devise the optimal health insurance solution for you. Over the years, health-insurance has become more and more difficult to understand and now, more than ever, expert advice is essential. If you go it alone and contact any of the health insurers yourself, you will only receive advice on the products offered by them. On the other hand, a health-insurance adviser will look at all the insurance providers and will recommend the most suitable product.

Get the best terms for your employees

Through its relationships with the health insurers, your adviser is best placed to first of all be aware of the best deals on offer – some of which are not really publicised widely! They are also then in a position to negotiate the best deal for your company. In some circumstances, they can offer unique group discounts for your employees and additional benefits, such as bespoke wellness programmes, which are very well received and can be organised at a time that suits you to tie in with employee-benefit days.

The team at Lyons Financial Services would be delighted to help you find the right health-insurance solution for your employees – we love helping companies to recruit and keep the best people! Please give us a call at 01 8015808 or email us at query@lfs.ie. While we help your people, you can focus your time on continuing to grow your business.