Does Anyone Provide Own Healthcare Insurance?

[perenlawn]

We are gearing up to make the change over from part-time to full-time for next year. We would like to provide our own healthcare insurance... at least for the time being for our own family and then to potentially offer it to employees later on as they become qualified... etc...

What suggestions do you have? Do you have your own health insurance? What are you paying/month for coverage? We appreciate your advice.

Perenlawn

[SCW]

We have an individual ins policy thru Blue Cross Blue Shield. Premiums are pretty steep---$560/mo for our whole family. But I know quite a few people paying that much for group family coverage and they work for small to med size companies.

We are considering offering ins to employees. I plan to meet with my agent and discuss options. I would recommend going thru an independent health ins agent---they can get quotes from several different companies and also help you stay away from bad ins companies. Do be careful if you offer ins to employees though----you're required to have a non-discriminatory plan. In other words---you can say "we'll pay xxx towards your health ins each month; or you must be a full-time employee to qualify for ins; etc"---but you can not say---"we'll pay 100% for your insurance (i.e. - your own family's ins); but we'll only pay $100/mo towards the other employees ins." Your policy has to be the same across the board for all employees--family or not.

[Scaper-S2k]

Yeh, we have it. I pay 100%, but may change that eventually if rates continue to increase. The law in Ohio says the employer must pay at least 50%. That may have changed in the past few years but I think it is still correct.

Call your local Chamber of Commerce. They usually offer all small biz owners the chance to join into a large group insurance plan.

[perenlawn]

Scaper (Eric H.)
Thanks for the advice. Do you belong to your local Chamber of Commerce? If so, does the membership provide for discounts for you to purchase insurance? We have begun to consider memberships such as these for business and networking reasons.. Also, do you belong to any other associations/affliliations?

Thanks,
Perenlawn

[Phil Nilsson]

What I'm seeing is a definite trend away from paying or even offering employee health insurance at all. Of course a lot of these companies have Hispanic employees and mostly what they want is a job that can give them the "hours" and a good hourly rate. Even some of the largest companies in the U.S. have or plan to reduce or discontinue coverage, have the employee pay more into it etc. because of the constantly rising costs.

IMHO what employees want and value most is a steady paycheck ... so what can be said if on the one hand the employer pays for a health plan and on the other "cancels" the worker and doesn't pay him for rain days, job delays, during the off season or whatever? They can't "eat" the insurance premium paid invoice. This is a real issue with seasonal employees, and if you pay premiums for health ... these continue during the off season and some of these people may not show up again in the spring.

Anyway ... food for thought.

[perenlawn]

Phil,
Thanks for the post. However, I have a question. I have talked to some employees of another l/c competitor in our area (he is a big one and one we are striving to be as successful as and even top). They pay their employees well and offer full range of benefits (health care, profit sharing, etc..) However, the employees must qualify for these items by working a specified number of hours/week and have worked steadily for one season. They also do plowing and snow removal during the down time. We are in OH.

I also have talked to an aquaintance at our church who owns a roofing business (very similar and seasonal as well) and he expressed that they had difficulty retaining their regular crew until they offered health insurance... Since they incorporated this into their benefit package, they have retained their same 4 regular full-time guys for 3 seasons.

I also found out the employee contributes a portion (much like any of us do that work f/t.) and that the business deducts an average (slightly higher portion) out of the withholding during the on-season to cover the premium costs during the down-time.

I agree with you about employers lowering health care coverage (I work p/t and my employer has just decided to change plans and charge more for less coverage this year). However, we have a guy that has been faithful for 2 seasons and told us if we had health coverage (that was affordable for him) available, he would gladly quit his other f/t job and work for us...He is the main breadwinner, his wife stays at home.

Of course, couple this with the fact I cared from my terminally ill mother 2 years ago who passed away from cancer and her employer decided to stop having medical insurance as a benefit to their employees mid-way through her illness and my father was stuck for a nice fat bill after she passed away. I of course am gunshy about us becoming self-sufficient and a f/t company and not having the ability to become soley independent in all facets.

The other reason I ask is because we pay @ $3500/year in healthcare costs out of pocket annually (for past 2 yrs) for our premiums, copays and out of pocket expenses. Ideally, we need @ 7% of our income to be going out in health care costs in order for it to be tax deferrable (we haven't gotten there yet!). What we were thinking was since we are incorporated, this money could be 100% tax deferrable to the company. Now, bear in mind, I am fully aware that the benefits we offer ourselves (as owners) we must also offer equally to our employees. It was a point that I am curious if you had any input or feelings about.

Thanks... I can't tell you how informative this site has been to us. I am encouraged by all that I have read and studied so far.

Perenlawn

[Scaper-S2k]

Phil, some companies are able to not only pay for the health insurance, but also rain days and holidays, sick days, vacation, etc. Oh, and a great paycheck.

Good employees deserve good benefits. Then again, I don't hire lazy guys.


Perenlawn, the Chamber of Commerce in Cincinnati puts the small biz owners into one large plan which reduces the premiums quite a bit. They are no more expensive than any one else pays. And we have the same coverage as any large industry out there. I opted to get the top notch coverage with dental, vision and the whole nine yards.

And under normal circumstances the people working in this industry are in the lower risk for health insurance companies, so costs are not that bad.

The employees are very thankful for it, and it gives all of us peace of mind.

Offering health care is the right thing to do if you can do it. If you can't? Raise your prices to pay for it.

[MortNuke]

Great topic, more input!

Mort

[SCW]

Scaper---it's great your Chamber of Commerce offers those benefits. Unfortunately, our local Chamber does not. We just recently thought we were going to lose our best guy because he found another job offering benefits. However...in further discussions we discovered the benefits he was going to get were very expensive and the coverage wasn't that great. In the end...we offered him a nice raise and were able to keep him. Like Phil said, I think a higher hourly wage is most important to these guys. But...it is in our plan to offer health ins within the next year or two.

Here's something I'm going to look into----staffing companies. One of my clients from my acctg/tax biz had about 20 employees but had a hard time getting workman's comp because of the business he was in. He went with a staffing company that was able to offer workman's comp, health ins, vision, the whole 9 yards. His employees consequently got better group coverage at a lower cost. Of course his "payroll fee" (which includes workman's comp and the employer portion of the health ins) averaged about 35%. But at the same time, he didn't have to fuss with quarterly p/r reports and such either. Just an idea...

[Phil Nilsson]

Health benefits, pay rates, raises, promoting workers ... all these things work themselves out during and after you have stabilized your business and have good cash flow.

If you're Hispanic "powered" and I would highly recommend it, what they want most is the highest hourly rate they can get ... along with lots of working hours each week. Some return home in the off season, so they are not a problem in the winter.

Myself ... what I did was to tie every benefit to time in grade ... paid a guaranteed 40 hour week (no matter the season, no matter what the weather) this was seen as the most "valuable" by my people. I also paid $2.00 an hour higher than anybody in the region ... reason #2 for working with me ... but they had to earn it with higher than average production and they did. Clearly defined goals, possible to reach ... I made it possible for them to make more money ... and myself as well. (my payroll ratio to gross sales was on average 30%)

My own (phil)osophy is to offer the extras on the basis of ... "If they'll make it happen for me" ... "I'll make it happen for them". My main job was to keep everybody busy with work and to maintain a "never run out of work" backlog ... so we became very diversified and crossed train everybody to do everything.

As soon as you yourself get "fat" share the wealth and you'll never have an employee problem ... in the meanwhile promote team spirit and make them a part of your business "family" ... overlook the bad and praise the good ... some workers are just naturally faster than others ... so what?

Bottom line ... the landscape industry has a hard time answering these questions ... "What can YOU offer the good employee?" ... "Why should they work for you?" ... cancelled rain days, hodge podge work hours, laid off all winter ... they don't need that.

Untimate goal is to have 12 months of steady solid work coming in. When you get "there" you'll attract steady workers to do the work and you'll be able to compensate them well.

[SCW]

What's the best way to find Hispanic workers? My husband's right hand man is from El Salvador and he's great. Excellent employee, extremely dependable, hard-working, etc. But he speaks very little English and is not interested in being a crew leader. We need a crew leader to free my husband up to work on other tasks. Since this employee moved here from up north, he doesn't know a bunch of people in this area. How do you recommend finding Hispanic workers that can also be trained for crew leaders?

[Phil Nilsson]

Go to Hispanic neighborhoods ... hand out cards says ...

landscape help wanted top wages paid and phone number ... top half in Spanish ... bottom half in English. Also hand out same cards to every landscape company out there in the field that you see ... just walk up to crews and give them a card.

Also visit the kitchen back entrance of restuarants, any place where Hispanics are employed ... chances are they'll make more money working for you ... canvass the area hotels, and motels ... walk the halls looking for the maid crews ... give them a card for their sons, cousins, and every other person "every which way but loose" ...

[JeffM]

Okay I don't mean this as a personal affront to Phil at all but you seem to be a bit obsessed with Hispanics... I've seen reference to them in your posts on more than one occasion. Do you reference using cheap labor in the materials you sell? I'm wondering if racism and taking advantage of the underpriviledged should be part of my business plan? I know that sounds harsh, and I understand part of where you're comming from from a dollars and sense point of view, but you might want to tone that down a bit, huh?

You are all sorts of helpful on the LSF but sheesh!

Oh yeah and I know the point that we would be providing unskilled labor with money to support their families, etc., etc., etc. - I couldn't agree with you more, but the way it is presented seems a bit demeaning....

Jeff M.

[steve-o]

Okay I don't mean this as a personal affront to Phil at all but you seem to be a bit obsessed with Hispanics... I've seen reference to them in your posts on more than one occasion. Do you reference using cheap labor in the materials you sell? I'm wondering if racism and taking advantage of the underpriviledged should be part of my business plan? I know that sounds harsh, and I understand part of where you're comming from from a dollars and sense point of view, but you might want to tone that down a bit, huh?

You are all sorts of helpful on the LSF but sheesh!

Oh yeah and I know the point that we would be providing unskilled labor with money to support their families, etc., etc., etc. - I couldn't agree with you more, but the way it is presented seems a bit demeaning....

Jeff M.

i agree with you jeff m. it is all about hispanics. what about taking care of americans?

[Scaper-S2k]

Wow, how did this thread get SOOOOO far from the question asked???



I say look for and hire good working Americans, pay them well, give them the benefits they deserve. They are out there ya know. I have yet to have a problem finding hard working Americans. I pay properly and give benefits other industries do. I have NOTHING against Hispanics, and would hire them any time, anywhere as long as they were legal. But I surely won't go out only looking for Hispanics OVER Americans.

Many, many people need jobs right now. Why 'OUTSOURCE'????? Then say "Buy American!"

Ironic huh?




If you can't hire hard working Americans, maybe you aren't charging enough? You shouldn't need to go hunting for Hispanics so you can turn a profit.


Some say Americans don't work as hard. Maybe because Mc. Donalds pays them more? Pay what the job is worth. Charge more if you have to. Don't underbid, then have to UNDER PAY employees because you didn't make enough $$, then wonder why they don't work so hard!!!!


Shame we just can't ship all the lawns to China and have some 8 year old mow them for $1.50 huh?