If you were an employee of your business, ranging from entry-level to management, would things like paying for health insurance or saving for retirement be achievable with your pay alone? If not, offering benefits is a great place to start improving your employees’ quality of life.
Whether you’re a new business looking to offer employee benefits off the bat or you’ve been around and have just gotten to a place where you’re comfortable exploring this option, you might still feel a little lost with all of the options out there.
CSI Accounting & Payroll has talked to thousands of small business owners over the past 50 years, and many of them wanted to know:
- What are employee benefits?
- Why should a small business offer benefits?
- How do I start offering my employees benefits?
What Are Employee Benefits?
Employee benefits are allowances that are offered to employees to positively influence their time spent with your company. They typically go beyond fun perks like an office party and venture into different financial benefits.
Here are some examples of employee benefits that CSI Accounting & Payroll offers to our clients:
- Paid holidays and vacation
- 401(k), Simple IRA, and other retirement plans
- Short-term and long-term disability
- Medical insurance
- Dental insurance
- Vision insurance
- Life insurance
- HSAs and FSAs
- ICHRA and QSEHRA
You can also make many of these benefits even more enticing by adding an employer contribution or match. You may also consider profit sharing.
Why Small Businesses Should Offer Employee Benefits
With the cost of providing employee benefits being an additional expense to you, you may wonder if it’s worth it to provide them as a small business with a tighter budget.
Here are three reasons why you may want to offer employee benefits:
1. Attract and retain talent. Offering any benefit is a great way to gain the attention of job applicants and to keep quality employees around. Both of those things can be hard to do at times!
Is this affordable? Absolutely. Consider the cost of offering a match versus how much money and effort it takes to constantly try to hire new employees or replace employees who leave.
2. They may be expected. Employee benefits, such as retirement plans, are expected in certain industries. This is especially true if the industries require higher education.
If you’re in one of these industries and don’t offer benefits, your competitors who do offer benefits are more likely to hire and retain quality employees who may have otherwise worked for you.
3. You, as the owner, will get benefits as well. This alone should show the value of offering benefits as a small business. You get to help your employees, and you also get to help yourself in the process.
4. There may be tax incentives in place. For example, there are 401(k) plan tax credits for small businesses that incentivize you to offer these plans.
As of the end of April 2022, the Secure Act 2.0 has made its way up to the Senate to potentially expand this credit to include 100% of 401(k) plan start-up costs for businesses with even more employees - now up to 100. (The credit is still capped at $5,000 per employer for the first three years for a total of $15,000.)
Ultimately, the choice is up to you. However, we believe these reasons make offering employee benefits worth it for most small businesses.
How to Get Employee Benefits
There are different places where you can look into getting employee benefits. If you work with a payroll service, they may partner with different benefit providers like CSI Accounting & Payroll does. CSI and our partners offer all of the benefits listed above.
During your onboarding meetings at CSI, we review your business’s situation (especially if you also use our accounting service, which is advice-based). It’s at this time that employee benefits would likely come up, although you can bring it up with your contact at any time.
At CSI, you have a dedicated payroll specialist who is your main payroll point of contact. You’re able to contact them directly on their phone line or email at no additional cost to you. If you decide that you’re ready to discuss or sign up for employee benefits, it’s easy to get in touch!
After you let us know that you’re interested in signing up for employee benefits, we’ll pass on your contact information to the appropriate partner. They’ll be in touch with you shortly to request the rest of the information they need to get you a quote.
The only employee benefits listed above that CSI will handle directly is tracking your holiday and vacation pay, which we can start for you right away!
Offer Employee Benefits Through Your Payroll Service
Insurance, paid time off, retirement plans, pre-tax accounts… Finding the right benefits to offer your employees can be overwhelming with all of the options available nowadays.
However, recognizing your options and how they’ll benefit you, as well as how you can get started with CSI Accounting & Payroll, means that you’re ready for the next step.
Let’s discuss how our payroll service can assist you with getting employee benefits! Click the button below for a free consultation.
If you’re not ready to talk to a consultant yet, be sure you know what a payroll service costs first.
