What are Your Small Business Health Insurance Goals?

As small businesses take steps to offer employee health benefits it is important to ask -- What are our health insurance goals? What do we want to achieve? How can we measure the results? 

Why Identifying Small Business Health Insurance Goals Matters

As with any significant investment or decision, identifying measurable goals helps your small business get to the desired result, and know (or prove) that your investment was a success.

With a small business health insurance program, identifying your health insurance goals will help you:

• Get all decision-makers get on the same page (i.e. the decision making process will go smoother)

• Decide on the best health benefits approach (ex: a small group health plan vs. pure defined contribution health benefits)

• Set key performance indicators (KPIs) for your health benefits program, which will help you evaluate the success of the health benefits over the long-term

What Are Your Small Business Health Insurance Goals?

Every small business has different reasons for offering employees health insurance. Likewise, they will have different goals. For example, a cost control measurement may be the KPI for one company, whereas an employee retention or employee morale measurement may be the KPI for another company. 

Here are some same questions to help you identify your small business health insurance goals:

• Why do you want to offer health benefits? This is a broad question but will get the conversation started about the goals of the new program. Common answers may include: to take care of employees, to retain key managers, to compete with larger businesses for talent, etc. Agree on the top three goals. Then ask yourself, can we measure these goals? 

• In one year, what does success look like? A year from today, what specific results do you want to see? Examples: our budget was controlled (no surprise costs), our employee retention rate was reduced by 20%, or the annual employee morale survey returned 30% more positive results. Do these signals of success match your top three goals above? If not, adjust your goals.

Want to dig deeper? Here are example questions to help you identify your more specific small business health insurance goals, and needs:

• Who will the health benefits program cover?

• What is our health benefits budget?

• What do employees value most?

• Who will manage the health benefits program?

These more specific questions will help you pinpoint your needs, as well as identify the best small business health insurance solution for your business.