Pop quiz! What is a tangible thing that employees who are considering joining a company look for outside of pay? Did you say benefits? That's what it is. If you are a small business, you are probably not in a position to be rolling out private chefs and the masseuse chairs, but you certainly can offer meaningful benefits to your employees. Today, I have one of my business partners, our benefits expert here at Acacia HR Solutions, and she is going to break down what small businesses need to be thinking about, what they really can offer, and how they can get a little creative with their benefits, some mistakes that we have seen small businesses make, and one thing you can do today to start making sure your benefits are on track. So, if you are not sure if you should be offering benefits or you want to but you don't know how, this episode is definitely for you. Hello and welcome back to the HR Connection. I'm your host, Sabrina Baker, and today we are talking all things benefits inside of a small employer. And I, I've made a couple of confessions on this podcast, and here's a big one that will be no surprise to anybody who knows me, but I hate benefits. I mean, I really hate them. I don't understand them. They make no sense to me. I can't remember all of the ins and outs of them. I don't always remember how they work. And so, when I needed to expand my business, when I needed to make a hire, when I wanted to bring on staff, I knew that I was going to need a benefits expert. I knew that I was going to need somebody to supplement that lack of knowledge that I had. And so today, I'm very excited to have Christine Kopp with me. Christine was the first hire inside of Acacia, outside of myself. So she's been here a long time. Um, and she is our resident benefits expert among many other things. Um, but I'm super excited to have this series with my business partners. She is number two, so we've heard from Penelope already. And then in a future episode, you will hear from Marie Rolson. But today, it's all things benefits. I'm going to let Christine introduce herself. Uh, share what she loves about working at Acacia and what she would be doing if she weren't in HR. Yes, thank you. I'm, I'm so excited to be here today. So, I am Christine Kopp, uh, the HR business partner at Acacia HR. What do I love about working here? I think you'll hear from every member of our team that it's all about the variety. Working with clients, helping businesses, small businesses, um, at that rate, um, really come up with people solutions and strategies to really grow their business. Um, so that is the part that I really get geeked up about and, and really enjoy on a day-to-day basis. Um, it's just working with those clients and helping see their businesses grow. Um, what would I do if I wasn't doing HR? I really had to think about this because I feel like I've been doing HR for a really long time. Um, but it goes back to college, and initially, I had planned to, uh, go into interior design. So I would definitely be doing something very creative, maybe something on home and garden TV. Um, but, uh, the funny story is, is I, had planned to go into interior design, and at the very last minute, switched gears and said, I think I'll just do business. And then a year or two in, I was asked to make a major and I couldn't decide. So I went with human resources, because it sounded it sounded more fun than just basic management. So, uh, here I am, many, many years later, and, um, loving what I'm doing every day. Isn't it funny how many majors ended up being picked just because you had to? I I think a lot of HR people too fell into it. I certainly fell into it. It wasn't what I thought I was going to do, but here we are all these years later. All right, so Christine, I think the first thing we have to talk about with benefits, of course, and especially for our small business clients, clients who come to us, benefits are expensive. They are very expensive. I've talked on this podcast before about the route that we went, how we did not go traditional benefits. We have not done that. We went to, um, a Coursera instead, which you helped me set up. Uh, because of the financial burden and then also the adoption, um, it feels so expensive. The costs are going up every year. Anytime there's an open enrollment, we always kind of hold our breath on what the renewals are going to look like for our clients and how those are potentially going to be costly. And so we have to, I think, rethink benefits. We have to rethink the way that we look at them, the way that we think about them. They're important. Employees want them. They need them. Um, but maybe there's a mindset shift that we need to be thinking about. So, uh, from your perspective, what are those things that employers should be thinking about when it comes to their benefits? Yes, so the biggest thing is, for our small business, stop trying to compete with larger organizations. There is no way to compete dollar for dollar for the types of benefits that larger organizations are able to offer. But what small businesses can do is, instead of comparing themselves to what the larger organizations are doing, they are in a position where they can really tailor and build benefit plans that meet their employees' needs and are benefit plans that they really value. And so, uh, shifting the mindset from cookie-cutter benefits that large Fortune 500 companies are offering to really tailor value-driven benefits are one of the first steps that I would recommend small businesses taking. Yeah, and that's certainly kind of what we did, right? We really looked at what our employees are going to appreciate more, rather than just throwing these traditional benefits out there that maybe not everybody would enjoy or use. What is something that our, uh, team would really get value out of? And it doesn't have to be always that traditional route, for sure. All right, Christine, so we know that small businesses can be creative. They can certainly look at and shouldn't just automatically assume that the traditional benefit route is the route that they need to go. We certainly have clients who go the core traditional route, and we have those who do a more creative route, and some that do hybrid. Um, and so I would love to talk to you about both approaches. And the first one would be core benefits. If we're talking about the core traditional route of medical, dental, vision, what do you think small businesses need to know when they're trying to set up those plans? Yes, so I like to, I like to put core benefits into two different segments, essential benefits and optional benefits. So for small businesses, it's important that you understand what your employees need. So for example, if you have a very young population who are still covered under their parents' insurance, they may not be thinking about medical benefits right now. It may not be something that's truly important to them. However, if you have a group of employees who are just starting their families and are growing their families, medical benefits are going to very much be at the top of their mind. So really understanding your employee base is the first step to determining what types of core benefits to offer. Medical may not be the option. It may not be what your employees are looking for. So understanding that before you invest all those dollars will really be key. Now, the other two types of benefits, what I consider optional, are dental and vision. While employees have come to expect when they start at an organization that they'll receive medical, dental and vision are two types of benefits that are kind of nice to have. Employees do, uh, like to have them, and they've gotten used to seeing them in their benefit packages, but it's not going to be a deal breaker. The other thing to note with optional benefits, like dental and vision, is that employers can still offer these types of benefits without breaking the bank. Many employees are used to paying 100% of the premiums, and what they get by offering this through their small employer is you get those group discounted rates, whereas if I went out on the individual market, my dental plan would probably be double the cost. So understanding really what your employees need from benefits before you start investing in them is going to be key to figuring out which core benefit solutions should be offered. Yeah, I think that is super important to think about, making sure that you are looking at your employee population: what is important to them, what do they need, looking at what is, you know, financially able, what your financially able to do. And then I know there are things like, uh, HDHPs and HSAs and all these other acronyms that I honestly don't even know what they mean, but I know that you can use them to bring down the cost or to supplement what you're already offering. We'll have a link to some acronyms, benefit acronyms for you in the show notes below, but this is why it's really important to have somebody that you're working with that understands benefits, whether that be your broker or your HR leader, to, uh, help understand that here's what we're financially able to do, and then here's the different things that we might be able to offer that gets to that core benefit offering that we really want to do, that traditional benefit offering, but also meets the financial capabilities of the organization. All right, let's talk about some fun things now. So, uh, I've already mentioned that we did not go the the core route, we didn't go the traditional route, we went the QSARA route because I knew that then all employees would be able to participate and be able to participate at the level they needed to. It just made a lot more sense for us. I also know that we have clients who have some pretty creative benefits, so for an organization who maybe doesn't want to go the traditional route, maybe they're not financially capable of offering medical, or any of your traditional benefits, um, what are some really fun creative benefits that they could offer to be able to give employees something that still meets whatever their budget allows? Yes, so the benefits landscape has changed over the last 15-plus years. Uh, people consider lots of things benefits; it's not just medical anymore, it's paid time off, it's holiday, all of these things are what employees consider as part of their benefits package. And there's lots of opportunities out there now, and lots of providers that can allow small businesses to get creative. So if traditional benefits are really out of reach, and for some small businesses they are, you can still build a benefits package that employees will love and want to, uh, take a part in. So I'm going to break apart, um, a few different options, around some, uh, creative benefit solutions that might work for your small business. Um, the first option, you know, we talked about medical, um, and the last segment, um, about that being an essential benefit. And so, you know, employees have, again, come to really expect to have some type of traditional medical plan, but we all know how expensive it is. We've all seen, you know, what's out on the market, um, for even individual coverage. Um, that doesn't mean, because you can't offer a traditional medical plan, that you can't still support your employees' health and wellness through other options. You know, obviously, you know, out there, people are pretty familiar with EAPs and the different mental health benefits that are available, but one really creative solution that has really come to the forefront lately is that there are providers out there that will allow you to purchase a standalone telehealth benefit.  Um, it's very inexpensive, it allows employees access to, uh, doctors, um, prescription drugs, and it can be as little of a cost as $5, per person, per month, up to $25 per person, per month. So, you know, this is just one solution where if you can't do a full medical plan, that you could still offer some health benefits to really, um, beef up your benefit package. So that, that's one option. Uh, for, for employers to look at, as well as EAP and, and mental health services. I will say EAPs are a great benefit, and they are so underutilized. Um, but you can really build out some pretty robust EAP plans for very little cost, um, for, for a small business. A couple of other, uh, items, these may not be considered benefits per se, um, but lifestyle, uh, types of benefits. Uh, these are typically post-tax, um, but when you talk about what is it that my employees want and what are they looking for in a benefit plan, lifestyle benefits are a really great option to add in. You know, if your employees aren't really interested in medical, but they like to go to the gym, there's a way for you to put your benefit dollars towards something that they'll actually use and really enjoy. So lifestyle benefits are an amazing, um, opportunity for small businesses to contribute to what's going on in their people's lives, so whether it's going to the gym or helping to subsidize some, uh, daycare costs, there's a lot of options available and providers that can help, uh, help small businesses build a program that's, that is beneficial to a lot of different groups of employees, not just one. The next item that we have seen a lot, of our clients start to do is expand upon time off. We all know that, uh, employees want time off, they want flexibility. Um, but from a small business perspective, adding more PTO and vacation can really be a drain on the books, because you're holding that liability for that unused PTO time. So what we've actually seen a lot of clients do is adding in extra holidays throughout the year, or extending certain long weekends, or even taking off that holiday week. It's not what you normally consider as part of your benefit plan, but it definitely is something that employees really appreciate and value, and you can roll it up as part of the overall offerings for your employees. The last thing I want to talk about is retirement. So we've talked about health plans, we've talked about flexibility and time off, but retirement plans. You know, back in 2023, California passed a law that any employer that has one employee or more has to offer some type of, uh, retirement plan. And there, and, you know, for a lot of small businesses that was scary at first, what am I going to offer all the compliance aspects to it? But one option for small businesses to look into are for simple IRAs. So if you have less than 100 employees, a simple IRA is a great way for you to show that you really care about your employees' financial health without all the compliance, without all of, um, the, uh, the necessary legalities around offering a true 401(k) plan. It's still allows you to put some dollars into their retirement savings plan for employees, and that's really important to people these days. Because a lot of small businesses can't always say they can put dollars there. Um, and it helps your employees with their financial well-being. Yeah, you know, all great ideas. It's, it's interesting, interesting on the retirement, we often, I know we'll have clients say, well, I can't do a match, so I shouldn't offer retirement, and I know we always say, offer it anyway, let them put their money away, whether it be in a traditional 401(k) or a simple IRA. It's certainly the first benefit we offered in this business was a retirement plan. Um, just so we had something that employees could feel like they were contributing to their future, even if we couldn't do a match or not do a large match. Um, all of the ideas I think are, uh, can be really creative and can go along way in helping employees feel like you're giving them something, you know, we, for the first time last year, shut down for Christmas to New Year's, and, um, I didn't hear a single complaint. And I, I didn't expect to hear a complaint about the time off, but I also didn't hear a complaint about when people came back, they felt overwhelmed, or they felt like they had to catch up. It's a quiet week for us, and people really loved being able to completely disconnect, know that everybody else was disconnected too, so they weren't going to come back to a million emails and a million things to do, and, and it's been, it was nice to see kind of that mental health boost, and, you know, to your point, people don't always think about that being a benefit, but little things like that, an extra holiday, an extra, you know, summer Fridays, those are all great things that you can do when you want to get really creative with your benefits, and you don't have the budget for the traditional route. All right, so Christine, here's the big question. It's something that we certainly deal with all the time and talk to clients about. I mentioned it in the beginning. But it is the cost of benefits. We certainly, um, you know, hold our breath every open enrollment for every different client, which goes on for months, because they're all at different times. When we are waiting for their renewals, and when we have clients who want us to go out and get new quotes, you know, it's kind of that nail-biting experience of getting the quote back to see what those costs are going to look like, because they are small businesses, and they're not going to get the same rates and the same rich benefits that a much larger organization could. They're just not going to have those available to them. It's not even in the employer's control. To be able to do that, this is what the benefits will offer you. And it can sometimes be really, really costly, and that can be scary. So what advice do we often give to our small business clients around the cost of benefits? Yeah, so I'm going to talk about three things today. So the first thing is, yeah, don't have to do it all at once. Rome wasn't built in a day. Um, I tell a lot of my clients to build what you can afford, and then you can add later. You know, employees are used to working in a small business and knowing that there's trade-offs.  You're not going to have the top benefits. You aren't going to have, um, you know, 15 different medical plans to pick from that are tailored to every, everything in your life. Um, but what they know is that they really believe in that small business. And I think most employees are really appreciative when benefits are being offered. So what I typically tell my clients is, start small, really understand what you can afford, and then you can only go up from there. The one thing you don't want to do is throw everything all in and then realize the next year, when your renewal comes, that you can't afford, uh, that you can't afford all these benefits, and then start taking things away. So, I usually tell clients to, you know, carve out a budget, look at what you can really truly afford, and some of that might mean that you're not doing as rich of a cost share that you may like to do. Um, but you're still offering that benefit. Um, the other thing that I tell employers, uh, small businesses to keep in mind too is, plan for the future. So many times when I speak with clients and we get that first round of renewals, and again, you don't get a lot of say when you're on the small business plan, you just get what the book of business is for that group, for that provider. Um, but I always tell them that, look at that number, and then know that next year it's going to go up. And it probably, so it'll probably go up at least 10% if it's lower, that's great. But if you plan for those increases, ahead of time, then it's not such a strain to the business the next year, because really, benefits are kind of volatile. I think it's gotten a little better in the small business scape, where they're not, um, the increases aren't such large fluxes, but many times businesses are always surprised the next year that the costs went up. So always tell people, start small, build from there, and always plan for some type of increase. The second thing when offering, um, benefits or starting to offer benefits is be transparent. Uh, around what you are able to do and, and, and communicate that to people. Again, everybody works for a small business, knows that there's trade-offs, and, you know, being transparent about what you can and can't afford, help people to really appreciate that you put in a lot of effort and thought into the different, um, benefit offerings. And be transparent if you're only offering one thing this year and say, look, we're going to assess next year if we can add to this benefit package. But for now, this is what we can financially afford, and, um, and we're excited to kind of offer it to you. The third thing, and this is one I think is probably the most important, is when you get ready to offer benefits, get a broker. Uh, I cannot stress enough that it is so important to have a partner in this journey of benefits, because to Sabrina's point, most people do not love benefits. Um, but there are people out there that do this for a living. And so I definitely recommend small businesses find a good, solid broker who can help sift through all of the different plan options, all of the different carriers. They can tell you about the pros and cons of going with one network over the other. They can tell you what's going on in the industry. They have small business groups that can tell you what other small businesses are doing. So really having that partner is paramount into offering benefits for the first time. Yeah, I know we have broker partners that we absolutely adore, and one of the things that I love about what they will do is, um, we can go to them and say, look, here's the budget we have, and we want to offer these things. Do you have any creative solutions for us to be able to do that? And they may have a benefit we didn't even know about, or they may be able to, um, you know, cut this contribution here somehow and add it over here to where it feels like a wash for employees. It doesn't feel like anything was, uh, taken away from them, but then it feels like something was added. And so, um, I would say certainly all of your suggestions there for cost, especially, um, the planning for increases, because we know that we definitely have clients who get quite a surprise after a year or two. Um, or after a year one going into their renewals, and then getting that, that good broker partner, um, I, we call on ours so much, and, and really appreciate how invested they get into the business and making sure that they, um, that, that they are getting you what you need and the nice thing about brokers is they don't cost the small business anything. So brokers are free. So the small business, right, Christine, I don't understand benefits. You better correct me if I'm wrong. But yeah, um, brokers are free to the small business. They're paid by the carriers. So that's a nice easy, uh, partnership that you can have in a small business that doesn't cost you anything, but that can really reap huge benefits in just that knowledge and resources that they have available to them. So Christine, one of the benefits of the work that we do is that we work across many different clients, many different industries. We don't niche down by industry, area. We're global. We have clients who are global. Um, range from eight employees maybe up to 450 so really all over the map as far as, uh, what they're offering in their benefit ranges, what they are, um, providing, how much they're paying, all of those things. And so in that, because we have that wide variety, we get to see, and learn from their mistakes. Um, so if you had to pinpoint some of the most common mistakes that you see our clients making with their benefits, what would those be? And then if you have any tips for cleaning those up, we'd love to hear those too. Yes, so I have found over the years that there are four common mistakes that small businesses make. When creating their benefit plans, the first one is only selecting benefits that the founder or leadership, executive team find beneficial. Or valuable. Um, you know, whether it's retirement or using a specific, uh, network, uh, sometimes the founders will want things that the employees don't. Um, we always recommend to get away from this is to do a benefit survey. It doesn't take very long, but you can really start to understand what types of benefits your employees value, and even have them rank them, um, so for example, if the founder really wants to have a gym membership, but nobody else wants to, and it's going to cost, you know, a thousand dollars a month to offer a certain benefit for that, you, you know, you could use those dollars towards a medical plan or, you know, towards another creative benefit option. But you wouldn't know that unless you ask your employees what they're interested in. So I always recommend if you've never done benefits before, to really survey your employees and then, of course, you get to make the decision on what you can afford to do or not, but at least you have that information in your pocket. And you can use that for subsequent years too when you're looking to, should we add benefits or not? The next item is not communicating benefits clearly. Um, I hear this all the time during open enrollment. Employees will come up and they will say, I had no idea we even had dental. How is that possible? Well, it's, it's, it's easy to do because a lot of times benefits are only communicated once a year at open enrollment. And employees get busy. We don't think about it. And next thing you know, it's open enrollment again. And then it's kind of like you have amnesia and you've forgot about what was offered before. So we definitely recommend communicating benefits clearly, but also often. There always should be some type of a mid-year benefit communication, whether that's a 401(k) presentation or a simple IRA presentation. That employees can voluntarily sign, voluntarily sign up for, or just sending out information about, hey, did you know that we offer these benefits? Um, and ahead of open enrollment and not while we're throwing all this other information at them. So I definitely recommend taking a look at that communication strategy and also just to get people to use the benefits. If they don't know they have a company-paid benefit, remind them about it and remind them about it often. Um, the other item, kind of piggyback on the first, um, where, you know, maybe the founder is really trying to, um, pick benefits that benefit them, but not the organization. But we see a lot of small businesses that once they put benefits in place, they don't reevaluate them. So, certainly recommend, you know, once a year, or every other year, doing a benefit survey and just checking in. If anything, seeing how things are working. Um, it's amazing. Um, and in the past, I've had clients that found out they were on a plan and a network, but nobody's doctors were in it. Everybody hated it. And that's why nobody used it. So you definitely don't want to be in a situation where you're offering benefits that aren't of a value to employees. Um, you'd rather spend those dollars elsewhere. And then the last thing that sometimes I see small businesses do is assume that because nobody's using the benefit, that it's not valuable to anybody. And so I certainly recommend that, you know, if you have benefits that aren't costing anything to offer, you know, maybe it's a, it's a voluntary accident or a voluntary sickness plan. It's not costing you anything to offer that. And maybe while people aren't enrolling in it now, as you grow the business, that could be a benefit somebody would find valuable. So, you know, don't just assume because no one's using it, it's not valuable and scrapping it. You never know when you'll need it. Uh, EAP is another great example of, it's a, it's a benefit to a lot of people. It's under-communicated, under-utilized, but doesn't mean that you should scrap it because there could come a time where something catastrophic has happened or your employees really need it and you're going to be glad that you have it. Yeah. Yeah, those EAPs, uh, you don't need it all the time, but definitely when, when you do, it's, it's an important benefit. You know, one of the things, so Penelope was on, uh, the, the episode before you here talking about payroll, of course. And one of the things that she said, and I think this applies to benefits too, is you cannot just set it and forget it. You can't just set up your payroll and forget it and assume that all your deductions are right and assume that everything's happening right. That your PTO balances are accruing correctly. Same thing with benefits, right? It's not a, you set it once and you forget it. This is an ongoing thing that you're constantly reevaluating, constantly looking at, uh, just to make sure that what you're doing makes sense, both financially for the business and then also for the employees' use. All right, so the reality here is that small businesses should be offering benefits. They should have some level of benefits that is absolutely our recommendation. But if that level of benefits just comes in the form of time off or flexibility, that's okay. When you're thinking about expanding that, when you are looking at offering more than just the flexibility or just the time off and you're looking at either these core benefits, traditional medical, dental, vision, or maybe some creative pathways, you can absolutely do that even with the limited budget. It just takes really good strategy and a little bit of creativity. So one of the things we love to do here at Christine is give our listeners one takeaway. They are working inside of a small business. They're probably managing HR in a small business. Maybe they are managing HR with something else. Maybe they're also the marketing manager. So you don't have a lot of time. They don't have a lot of resources. What is one thing that they can do today to start thinking about their benefits and if it is where the business needs it to be? Yeah, so one thing that I would strongly encourage everybody to do is if you really, you've already done the financials, you know that benefits are something that you really want to, um, to offer to your employees is get that survey together. It doesn't have to be really, uh, long. It can be a Google form, but just to even see what people are interested in. Um, and just let people know that, hey, we're, we're considering offering benefits, but we want to hear from you. What you might be interested in. And so just taking that first step, that whole survey, if you will, to just see what people are even interested in or what they find value in. And then you can take that data and start to get creative and, and build a plan that will work for your small business. Yeah, absolutely. I think this is definitely an area where you, you have to find out what employees are thinking, um, and not just assume you know or assume what works for you is going to work for them. So I know we love benefit surveys for our clients and it's just such a great way to, to really identify what's going to be helpful, what's going to be helpful and meaningful for employees. Christine, thank you so much for being here. Um, I'm so, uh, thankful to have you. Just in the business, to be the benefits guru, because again, I don't understand them, don't love them. Um, but know that they're important and I'm glad that we have them and are able to offer them. So, I appreciate you being here to share all of your benefits knowledge, which I know we barely, barely touched. So in the show notes, we have a couple of things. One, we have a link to Christine's LinkedIn. You should connect with her. You can ask questions. Um, you know, pick her brain a little bit. And then we also asked her, a couple of rapid-fire questions around benefits that we maybe didn't get to today, like what is her most favorite creative benefit? What does she like out of maybe some of the ones she's mentioned today? Or maybe another one that, um, she's thinking about. So we have some just more details in the show notes. This, uh, again, is the second episode in our three-part series with the Acacia HR Business Partners. You heard from Penelope Angulo, our payroll manager in the last episode. The next episode will be Marie Rolston, who is, um, going to be talking about employee performance. And so I really hope that you are enjoying hearing from my actual team and the work that they are doing. These are the people doing it with clients every single day. Um, and so enjoying hearing from them on how they are actually executing some of this stuff with our clients. Thank you so much for being here on the HR Connection, and we'll see you next time. Thanks for having me here. It's been great.