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Originally Posted On: http://www.atyourbusiness.com/blog/should-you-provide-employee-health-insurance-a-guide-to-pros-and-cons/

American employers must provide their employees with a long list of basic benefits. These benefits include things like time off to vote and Federal Family and Medical Leave.

But they do not have to provide employee health insurance benefits if they don’t want to. As a result, less than 50% of private-sector companies extend health benefits to their employees at this time.

Is your company currently on the fence as far as whether or not to provide your employees with health benefits? If so, you should carefully consider the pros and cons of doing it before making a final decision.

Here are the pros and cons of providing employee health insurance benefits.

The Pros of Offering Employee Health Insurance Benefits

Do you want to make sure that you’re recruiting the best possible people to fill the roles that you have open within your company? It’s going to be difficult to do it without extending employee health insurance benefits.

There are a lot of Americans who won’t even think about accepting a job if it doesn’t come with any kind of health insurance benefits. It’s probably the No. 1 reason why you should think about offering these benefits to those you’re looking to hire.

One of the other big benefits of offering health insurance benefits is that it’ll keep those who work for you healthier. This will often lead to them being more productive at work and doing a better job for you overall.

The Cons of Offering Employee Health Insurance Benefits

In a perfect world, all employers would extend employee health insurance benefits to those who work for them. But of course, there is a cost that comes along with doing it.

If you’re going to set your employees up with health insurance benefits, you’re going to have to foot at least some of the bill for these benefits. It could hurt your bottom line in a big way if you choose health insurance benefits that are on the more expensive side.

Employers should crunch the numbers by using tools like this Employers NI Calculator to see if it makes good financial sense for them to extend health benefits to employees.

You could very well be surprised by how affordable health insurance benefits will be for your employees. But you might also find that offering these benefits to your employees simply isn’t in the budget for your business.

So, Should You Provide Your Employees With Health Insurance Benefits?

At the end of the day, only you can decide if employee health insurance benefits are going to fit into your business budget. You should run the numbers to see if you can afford to extend them to your current and future employees.

You should also consider the pros and cons that we’ve laid out for you here to see where you stand on providing your employees with health insurance benefits. They’ll help guide the way as you attempt to decide what you’re going to do with about these benefits.

Browse our blog to find more tips that will help you make important business-related decisions.