Company Health Insurance
SME health insurance

One of the most important – and costly – resources of any small to medium sized enterprise (SME) is likely to be its workforce. This also helps to explain why the successful business has also given careful consideration to its relationship with its employees. Central to that relationship, of course, are the salaries paid to employees, but these often represent only one part of the remuneration package. SME health insurance, for instance, plays an equally important part in that package for many employers..

What the employee might gain

The reasons for including a company-sponsored health insurance scheme in employees’ terms and conditions of service highlight the benefits to staff and employer alike. For the employee, those reasons might include:

• an enhanced sense of worth to an employer that cares enough to provide ready access to private medical care;
• access to a widely welcomed alternative to National Health Service facilities which are increasingly overburdened and often subject to long waiting lists; and
• access to private health care that employees might otherwise be unable to afford through individual subscription.

What the employer might gain

Whilst SME health insurance might bring immediate and practical benefits to the employees themselves, there are also distinct advantages to the employer too:

• inclusion of such a widely recognised benefit in the general terms and conditions of employment assists the company in attracting suitably qualified candidates to advertised vacancies and in retaining existing staff;
• the provision of ready access to private health insurance might help to enhance the image of the company as a caring, considerate and responsible employer, thus boosting staff morale;
• discounts available to the employer in running a group private medical insurance (PMI) scheme may result in cheaper premiums than individual employees arranging their own private health cover;
• the employer retains the ability to determine the level of PMI cover which it wishes to extend to its employees – whether or not this is designed to include both in-patient and out-patient care, for example;
• the company’s sickness and absentee personnel policies are typically made more robust and manageable, with a speedier return to work of those employees who have taken leave of absence because of an illness or other medical condition;
• the flexibility of SME health insurance allows the employer to decide which employees or which groups of employees enjoy the benefits of the company’s heath scheme.

In summary, corporate health insurance typically offers a wide range of options from which you are able to choose. These include those features that are most likely to assist in your recruitment and retention of a well-motivated, loyal and hard-working workforce. When sickness and other medical conditions inevitably strike members of your workforce, you might to rest assured in the knowledge that their recovery and return to work is likely to be accelerated by the prompt attention a private medical health scheme brings.