Your company's benefits offerings can represent a strategic differentiator for your brand, helping you to attract top talent and make an impact for recruitment in your industry. However, as benefits offerings continue to change – thanks to both updated technology capabilities as well as worker preferences – it's imperative that your brand keeps up.
In this spirit, we've gathered the results of our 2019 Employee Benefits Benchmark Survey. Triton HR & Benefits Solutions is uniquely situated to provide an in-depth overview of current trends in the employee benefits arena. As group benefits brokers, our survey was designed to take a deep dive into particular strengths and weaknesses of current benefits plans offerings offered across the U.S. Let's take a closer look and see how your plan stacks up against the nearly 500 respondents to our 2019 survey.
Demographics sourcing
As a leading group health benefits broker, we were able to capture responses from more than 500 human resource stakeholders at businesses across the nation. The majority of survey respondents worked within companies with 500 employees or fewer, and approximately half employ less than 100 employees.
This report addresses numerous topics. Below are some of the 2019 Employee Benefits Benchmark Survey highlights:
Health care benefits
The vast majority of employers continue to maintain health care benefits as part of their offerings, with just 1% of respondents not including this as part of their company package. About half (51%) of plans are fully insured, with just under a quarter (24%) of plans being partially self-funded and 18% fully self-funded. Most plans are Preferred Provider Organization (PPO), and there has been a steady increase in high deductible health plans (HDHP) with health savings accounts (HSA).
Overall, the majority of both employee and employer contributions to sponsored health care packages remained nearly the same as that seen in 2017 – on average, employers typically contribute about $5,000 annually to support individual worker premiums, and about $10,000 for family premiums.
Partner benefits
Research shows that more employers are expanding eligibility here to encompass not only opposite-sex partners, but same-sex couples as well. Overall, 67% of employers do not provide benefits for unmarried opposite-sex couples, 68% don't provide benefits for unmarried same-sex couples. But 3% of stakeholders said they were considering extended benefits in this way within their health plans. This represents, on average, a modest increase over the number of employers supporting partner benefits in 2017.
Prescription drug plans
The rising cost of prescription drugs over the last few years has made employer benefits support in this area increasingly popular, as well as increasingly important. In addition, businesses are also encouraging the use of generic drugs, and offering mail-order prescription services to further help curb rising drug prices.
Dental benefits
We observed a 10% increase in the number of employers offering dental as part of their benefits package, compared to 2017. Currently, 93% of businesses offer dental benefits, with the average deductible falling around $50.
Life insurance
Somewhat surprising is the considerable uptick in employers that are now offering basic life insurance as part of their plans. Where only 76% of companies included life insurance in their benefits package in 2017, 88% noted that they do in 2019. The majority of these insurance plans – 93% – are paid entirely by the employer, with most coverage in the $10,000-$29,999 rage.
Disability insurance
Another important benefit today is insurance for short- and long-term disability. Employer-sponsored short-term disability coverage saw a 14 increase compared to 2017, with 70 percent of businesses supporting this benefit. In addition, 62% of all companies provide long-term disability insurance, and the majority of these plans (63%) are completely employer-funded.
In addition to these offerings, our study also covers cost-management techniques for your prescription drug plan. What the annual worker and employer contribution is as well as the annual in-network deductible for families and individual.
Overall, employers are making strides toward more comprehensive and tailored benefits that map to workers' unique needs. In this way, not only do employee benefits represent a key perk for recruitment efforts, but can also contribute to higher job satisfaction and security.
To check out the full survey results and see, in-depth, how your plan compares to industry averages, download our report today.
