Onsurity Editorial
October 24, 2024
7 min read
452Table of Contents
Healthcare in India is booming but so is the medical inflation rate. At an alarming rate of 14%, the highest among all Asian countries, India’s medical inflation index indicates that healthcare is an expensive affair. Paying out of pocket for medical expenses is becoming nearly impossible for salaried professionals.
This shift is causing many individuals to rely on their employer-sponsored health insurance for coverage. It is therefore crucial for employers to provide their employees with health insurance coverage to protect them and occasionally their family members in medical emergencies.
What Is Group Health Insurance and Why You Should Consider Getting It?
A group health insurance (GHI) is an insurance plan that covers a group of people under one common policy/contract. This type of plan provides similar kinds of benefits and coverage to all members of a group regardless of their age, gender, occupation, or socio-economic status. Typically, this type of insurance is provided to employees by their employers.
According to a recent survey conducted by Aditya Birla Health Insurance, 79% of respondents rely on their employers for medical coverage. This small but highly impactful investment in your employees can even drive good business outcomes and create a pool of motivated and engaged employees.
A group health insurance policy doesn’t even cost as much as an individual policy. Due to risk pooling, the premium on group medical policy is lower than on individual health insurance. So, if you still haven’t considered getting a group health insurance plan for your team, here are 10 reasons that will make you rethink your decision.
Also read: The Ultimate Group Health Insurance Guide
10 Reasons For Offering Group Health Insurance To Your Employees
Offering group health insurance to your employees does not only benefit them but there are also many ways that it elevates your business and workplace culture. Some of them are listed below:
1. Employee Retention
2. Tax Benefits
Health insurance may look like an expense to your company but in reality, it is the opposite. Under section 37(1) of the Income Tax Act, 1961, employers can list insurance premiums paid towards the group health insurance policy as a business expense to avail of the tax exemption.
Under section 80 C of The Income Tax Act, employees can also claim tax exemption even though the premiums are paid by the employer. Isn’t the tax exemption benefit tempting you to invest in a group health insurance plan for your team today?
3. Attract Good Talent
Working professionals in India today highly value benefits like health insurance and wellness programs and they even make it a key deciding factor at the time of joining a new workplace. Adding health benefit packets for your team is no quick fix to attracting top talent, but it is a good start. More and more companies are adding wellness policies to their ecosystem to attract top talent.
4. Hassle-Free Claims
The third-party administrators (TPAs) have been extremely pivotal in managing claims for employers. Now, even more so, with the help of cutting-edge technology. Platforms like Onsurity, with the help of their Good Doctors team, make it effective a step further by intercepting possible challenges at the time of raising claims and remedying it effectively before processing them with the TPAs.
5. Mobile-Friendly
Most new age insurance providers are enabling a mobile-friendly experience for users. Features of these mobile-friendly providers, such as – the ease of raising claims, checking claims status, and identifying network hospitals at the touch of fingerprints are highly valued by users.
Additionally, services like telemedicine and e-pharmacy are often complimentary to these new age insurance plans. Such benefits are highly effective in creating satisfaction among your teams.
6. Employee-Centric Culture
Building an employee-centric culture means placing great importance on their well-being and their job satisfaction. Investing in your employee health and well-being is not just an ethical practice but a smart business decision. Initiatives like group health cover are the very key to unlocking job satisfaction, a parameter most crucial to employees, even more than their paychecks.
7. Cover For Family Members
In the individual health insurance policy, only the policyholder is covered. And if they want to make modifications or add a family member, they have to incur extra costs. However, most group health insurance plans cover employees and their immediate family members.
So, a group health plan is extremely valuable to employees who wish to also make inclusions for family members. By protecting your employees and their relatives your organisation is building a pool of dedicated and satisfied resources.
8. No Waiting Period
Unlike employee health insurance, most individual health insurance plans come with a pre-established waiting period. The waiting period is the duration for which a policyholder must wait before raising an insurance claim and for that specific duration, they must bear medical expenses on their own despite having a subscription to an insurance plan.
In case of group health insurance, this waiting period is waived off, especially for maternity cover. Most individual health insurance plans have a waiting period of more than a year.
9. Brand Building
10. Enhanced Productivity
A healthy and engaged workforce is the most productive. Whether you are a small business or a fast-growing startup, your team is most pivotal in driving business growth. According to a Gallup analysis, conducted with 1.4 million employees, engaged teams report 22% higher productivity. By extending health benefits to your employees and their families, not only are you safeguarding their well-being, but you are also ensuring they remain engaged at work.
Also read: Group Health Insurance for Small Businesses
Building Progressive Workplaces: Onsurity Group Health Benefits
Group health cover is more than just an employee benefit program, it is a powerful tool to build a progressive workplace. Now that you know the many ways it can benefit your business, are you ready to pick the right group health insurance plan?
When choosing a healthcare benefits partner, it’s important that you consider some of the following aspects of your workforce: team size, age and pre-existing health conditions, income levels, and lastly the average family size. These factors can help you identify the kind of plan inclusions your teams would most benefit from.
Once you have identified the plan inclusions, the next step is identifying the adequate sum insured for your team and the range and quality of the network hospitals. A well-rounded and holistic cover that’s built just for your teams’ specific needs is most likely to give you the best outcomes.
Bonus Inclusion
When opting for a health cover, do try to look for wellness inclusions, a holistic cover ensures your team stays protected through the complete healthcare cycle, from lifestyle management to prevention, to cure. Not only that but wellness inclusion makes your teams less susceptible to illnesses and hospitalisation.
And if you are looking for the most comprehensive and flexible plan then look no further. Onsurity’s health and wellness benefits are highly customisable and are available on a monthly subscription basis, with subscriptions starting from just ₹149 per employee.
FAQs:
1. What are the benefits of group health insurance for employers?
2. Why should you prefer group health insurance over individual health insurance?
A group health insurance policy is sponsored by employers and and it offers free coverage for medical expenses and occasionally outpatient expenses. Whereas an individual health insurance policy is bought by individuals. GHI comes with several benefits and features that are available to individual policyholders at an additional cost. If your employer offers you a comprehensive plan that covers a wide network of cashless hospitals and supplementary benefits, then you should opt for the GHI cover. Individuals can also avail benefits from both GHI and individual health insurance for diverse benefits, parallelly.
3. Should small businesses offer health insurance to employees?
Group health benefits can be accessed for teams of all sizes. Small businesses are likely to benefit from giving GHI plans to employees the same as any other business. Onsurity memberships are available for small businesses with teams of as little as 3 employees. Small businesses whose teams form a majority of gig workers and freelancers can also avail of Onsurity memberships to attract and recruit top talent.
4. Why don’t some companies still offer health insurance to employees?
Most companies do not offer health insurance to their employees because of either a lack of awareness or due lack of customisable options that fit their team requirements. However, there are many new-age options that they can opt for, for instance – Onsurity has custom plans available to incorporate these diverse needs at a highly competitive price.
