The Great Resignation. The Big Quit. The Great Reshuffle. Organizations nationwide are dealing with headline-generating events that have seen unprecedented numbers of workers leaving their jobs for better opportunities or to go it alone as independent contractors.
Throughout this transition, small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) compete with national retailers for workers. And the common wisdom is the best incentive is more money. But surveys have disrupted the common wisdom to show that money isn’t the driving force for labor migration.
In fact, 80% of workers say they’d take a job with better benefits over one with more salary. And that makes sense when you look at the numbers. Insurance deductibles for single employees – those more likely to work at SMBs – have increased almost 70% over the last decade, far higher than the cost of inflation. So, having a stable base of healthcare costs is more desirable than upfront money.
So rather than getting into a salary arms race with bigger rivals, smaller companies are offering employees what they really want – stable benefits and predictable healthcare costs without the shock of inflated deductibles. Those companies are not only better able to attract new workers, but they’ve also been able to hold on to the ones they have, while their competition suffers worker losses.
Healthcare brokers, seizing on this realization, have gone directly to the CEOs to offer an almost too-good-to-be-true answer to their number one pain point: how to attract and retain the best talent using NextGen benefits that provide better care, for lower costs, and have money left to increase salaries. That combination has allowed smaller brokers to thrive, even against bigger national brokers.
NextGen Benefits first selects providers with the most optimal healthcare outcomes. This is what’s known as the inverse relationship between costs and care. It seems counterintuitive at first, until you understand that when employees get first-class care from the start, their long-term healthcare costs go down. Using this model, NextGen translates lower costs into safer, healthier and happier employees, who naturally want to stick around.
It’s also easier now for brokers to offer CEOs a benefits package that solves many problems at once, making it even more attractive. NextGen calls it an “Integrated Retention & Recruitment Program,” and it has three key selling points:
1: Better healthcare outcomes for employees. Because the selected providers have been prescreened for the best possible results.
2: Zero out-of-pocket costs for employees. No deductibles or co-insurance means predictable costs and real savings.
3: An additional $2,000 in cash. The employer’s per-worker costs drop, giving them more cash to offer bonuses, increase salaries or reinvest in their businesses.
The appeal of these benefits is helping brokers grow their own businesses and their clients’ in a time of chaos. But the window on these perfect market conditions could slowly be closing, as better benefits become a standard part of every offer package. That’s why now is the time to act, in the face of market turmoil. Because fortune favors the bold.