The success of your business depends heavily on the well-being of your employees. Your company’s employee benefits package plays a sizable role in that welfare. In addition to standard health and dental plans, a growing number of companies provide group disability coverage for their workers. In weighing the pros and cons of OH group disability insurance, it helps to understand the working parts of this benefit.
Group Disability Plan Basics
Although disability coverage is the commonly used industry term, income protection insurance might be a better description. If injury or illness leaves one of your employees unable to work, disability insurance replaces a portion of the lost income. Before the payments start flowing, there is a waiting interval known as the elimination period. Short-term plans pay for periods ranging from three months to one year and come with elimination periods of 7 to 30 days. Long-term coverage typically has an elimination period of at least 90 days, a minimum coverage period of two years, and a maximum term that can stretch as far as an employee’s 67th birthday.
Group Disability Plan Advantages
Adding group disability coverage to your company’s benefits brings impressive upsides:
- Employee Income Protection Moves Within Reach: Whether your company shares costs or shoulders the entire premium, this benefit provides a measure of income security for employees who would likely struggle to afford it.
- Your Competitive Posture Improves: By boosting employee morale and enhancing retention and recruitment efforts, this benefit strengthens your company against competitors.
- Maternity Leave Benefits Expand: Some short-term plans can partially compensate mothers’ incomes for six weeks after childbirth.
- Your Company’s Public Image Strengthens: “A great place to work” is a review every business owner loves to hear. Although creating such a workplace takes years, offering disability coverage can be a valuable step towards that goal.
Group Disability Plan Downsides
Before committing to a group disability plan, it’s wise to consider possible drawbacks:
- Cost-Sharing Is Rare: While there is no prohibition on sharing the premium cost with your workers, a majority of employers pick up the total cost. Among businesses that offer this coverage, the Bureau of Labor Statisticsreports that 85% cover the total cost of short-term policies and 96% cover all of the premiums for long-term plans.
- Your Business May Have Lower Cost Options: To work as a recruitment and retention incentive, a group disability benefit ideally offers both short-term and long-term components. If this comprehensive approach is a budget-buster, then sweetening existing health and dental plans might be a better near-term objective.
A review of the advantages and disadvantages of group disability insurance reveals a highly desirable building block for an employee benefits package. If this benefit is currently out of reach for your company, adding such coverage in the future is a worthy stretch goal.
About Haughn & Associates
Founded by Michael Haughn in 1986, Haughn & Associates is a full-service, family-owned, independent insurance agency based out of Dublin, Ohio. H&A strives to provide the best possible price and unique insurance solutions across a myriad of industries, including construction, IT, Habitation & Commercial Property, Agriculture and Engineering. Devoted to providing the best of business insurance, life and disability insurance, personal insurance, employee benefits, and bonds, H&A is proof that success lies in long-standing client relations and satisfaction. To learn more about how H&A can be of service to you, contact us at (877) 802-2278.
