[TrickyDick]

For those of you who offer health insurance for your employees, how do you deal with seasonal people who are full time for eight or nine months and then get laid off? Do you allow them to pay for it themselves over the winter? Do you begin your three month waiting period each spring so that your employees are basically covered for six months a year? Or do you have a way to keep them enrolled even though they are laid off.

[Matt Kulp]

We cover the employees almost 100%, with the exception of a $15 biweekly charge. If they have there family on the plan, then they are expected to either pay out of pocket through the winter for the family portion or they can work it off. For the employees who have been with me for a long time, I will allow them to defer payment for there family until spring when they start working full time again. They all seem to like it and they still have coverage while they are off.

[TrickyDick]

If you're paying thier insurance while they're laid off then aren't they technically getting paid? Doesn't that affect thier ability to collect unemployment? Also- do you do anything to protect yourself against someone staying on your health plan for winter and not returning to work?

[Matt Kulp]

As far as I know, it has never been an issue with unemployment. In fact, I don't think they ever ask if you are being covered under any health insurance plan when filing a claim. I know of a number of construction and other landscape companies that do it the same way and have never had a problem. In fact, the construction company lays off over 75 people a year in the winter.

As far as the issue with them leaving, it is a gamble that I have chosen to take. After 6 years of doing it this way, I have not had a issue. I budget the expense at the beginning of the year and have it covered so I really don't think about it. I look at it as a cost of doing business and keeping good employees. If I get burned by 1 or 2 guys, I still have 10-15 others that need the insurance and are valuable to our team.

If you are going to only cover them 6 months out of the year, what family men or women are going to want to work for that?

That is interesting about the compensation value it represents to unemployment, I will have to check into that a little further tomorrow.

[GLAN]

Continued Insurance would not be compesation. It is an expense to the company......Not income to the employee. Has no bearing on Unemployment.

[johnkeegan]

We basically figure out the yearly employee's share of the health insurance, divide it by 35 and take that amount out of the person's pay for 35 weeks, which is approximately the number of weeks worked.
...and a question for Matt. It sounds as if you pay for family health insurance and only ask for the employee's to kick in about $500/year (plus a portion when laid off). Around here a family plan would cost around $10K per year. That would be a budget buster for me. I'd have to drastically cut my pay rates to fit that in. Or is health insurance that much cheaper in PA.?

[Matt Kulp]

Originally posted by johnkeegan
We basically figure out the yearly employee's share of the health insurance, divide it by 35 and take that amount out of the person's pay for 35 weeks, which is approximately the number of weeks worked.
...and a question for Matt. It sounds as if you pay for family health insurance and only ask for the employee's to kick in about $500/year (plus a portion when laid off). Around here a family plan would cost around $10K per year. That would be a budget buster for me. I'd have to drastically cut my pay rates to fit that in. Or is health insurance that much cheaper in PA.?

No, actually health insurance in PA is extremely expensive. I may have not been clear in my earlier post. We cover the employee only for $15 per paycheck. The family portion is covered by the employee entirely at this point. I have weighed the option of helping with the family, however some of my team does not have families yet and I don't think its fair to cover some and not others.
I would love to cover everybody, because I feel it is very important in getting overall health cost down, it just is not feasible at this time.

[johnkeegan]

I'm on the same page as you regarding health insurance. It's embarassing to me that we live in such a wealthy land that can't be bothered with the fact that millions of working class families can't afford to be covered by our overpriced health care system. And by the way, I just read this morning that health care costs in the US will average almost $10K for PER PERSON by 2011.

I guess as long as the people making the laws and those that pay to get them elected and every governmental employee is covered, there's no real problem. The small businessman and working class families that pay for the plans of those people are expected to just shut up and wait until we reach 65 to be included.

[TrickyDick]

Matt I think that what you're doing is the right way to do it. We have been doing that for key people but it is hard to figure out the details of what is legal vs what makes sense sometimes.

[Matt Kulp]

One legal issue you can run into with benefits is that you can't offer a benefit to one employee and not offer to the next. Obviously they have to go through the probation periods, etc... What I am talking about is paying for one employees insurance and then not paying for another's after they have met your pre set criteria for obtaining benefits. You run into discrimination issues this this scenario.

You can do it to some degree with a written employment contract between the company and certain employees.

For example, my operations manager gets additional benefits not listed in the company handbook. However, we have had to set up an agreement with him stipulating the terms and the agreement of both parties. If I just went and gave him additional days off, or paid for his families health care without such an agreement, then it legally opens up the wrest of the company to be eligible for the same perks. It is all a legal game and should not be taken lightly, one upset employee could make your day real bad, real quick.