After health insurance, what’s the second most important fringe benefit to provide your employees?
Disability insurance is remarkably inexpensive and is well worth the peace of mind it provides both you and your employees.
As everyone will agree, health insurance in today’s world is a necessity. But, after health insurance, what follows for the next most important benefit? Some would argue dental, others life and a variety of other must haves. In my opinion, from both an employee and employer perspective, disability Insurance is the one benefit that guarantees families a sense of financial support and stability during times of illness or recovery from accidents and the like.
I often ask business owners the following question: “Who in your organization makes the decision when to fire someone when they’ve been absent for an extended period of time due to an illness or injury?” They all agree that it’s a difficult situation to resolve and one they don’t relish deciding.
The best answer that comes to mind is to provide disability insurance, both short and long-term to protect both your employees and their families from unexpected sudden interruption in income flow. Should the circumstance be long-term, disability insurance provide a means of survival for the family.
The second advantage disability insurance provides is an answer to the question I pose to business owners above. With disability insurance no one has to make that decision, at least not immediately because you’ve insured against a negative outcome. Disability insurance pays the salary outlay the employer would have had to pay and eliminates the painful decision that could otherwise need to be made.
So, disability insurance is a win-win for both the employer and the employee. It pays the employee in time of need and removes the difficult decision from the employer’s responsibility.
Disability insurance is remarkably inexpensive and is well worth the peace of mind it provides. I’ve often joked, you can’t buy gas or groceries with Dental Insurance, but you sure can with disability checks.
If disability insurance is something you’re interested in exploring further, ask your broker to prepare a few disability quotes for you to review. You’ll be pleased with the result of your efforts.
This post was originally published in January 2017.
