Should you add maternity in insurance that you offer to your employees? 

If it was not enough that the progress towards increasing gender equality in the workspace has been slow, the COVID-19 situation has made the gender gap all the wider. The corporate world is taking several strides towards lowering the gap and attracting women workforce like adding maternity in insurance plan that they offer to the employees and creating a favorable work-life balancing environment for the women.  

However, while benefits like maternity cover policy find themselves in the employee benefits list offered by FAANG and similar companies, does it make sense for startups and SMEs to add them in their offering?

Specially since the claim for maternity is generally on a higher side? Not always. For a startup with less than 50 people in the team, it can do more bad than good on the finances to offer maternity insurance options with group health insurance to the women workforce.  

In this article, we are going to investigate when maternity in insurance is indeed the best edition for startups and SMEs when they design healthcare plans for women employees. 

On a precise level, we are going to look into when it makes sense to add the offering knowing that the premium payable on a maternity insurance policy is higher than a regular health plan. The certainty of a claim being filed under the policy is absolute, which is why insurers levy a higher premium on these policies. 

Should you add maternity in insurance that you offer to your employees: The deciding factors 

Team size 

Offering maternity coverage in the group health insurance makes the most sense when you have a team size of more than at least 100 employees with both male and female members. Since it is only the women who can avail maternity health insurance, it won’t for example, make sense to introduce the plan in your factory with only male employees.  

In addition to the gender division, the decision of whether to add maternity in insurance plan can be taken based on the team size. If you are 5 to 50 employees strong, it won’t make financial sense to invest in high premium maternity plans when you should make investments in your company’s growth.

Continuous offering  

There are several things that form the answer to what does maternity insurance cover. Now going by the general assumption that if you are adding maternity coverage in your women workforce healthcare plan today, you will be committing to it for the long haul, the amount can turn out to be difficult to manage as your company goes through the difficult phases of a startup’s survival.

So, before you finalize a maternal insurance plan provider, take a good look at your business continuity model and see if you can afford to make it long-term. 

Finances  

The premium on maternity insurance plan is very high compared to other insurance types. 

While the image here shows information of only three providers, the numbers will more or less remain the same irrespective of what the search result shows when you look for which insurance cover maternity. For an employer, this means that you will have to pay very high premium if you introduce maternity insurance in your plan.  

Attract women workforce  

There are a number of companies that doesn’t take gender equality in workforce seriously till it’s too late. For them, it becomes the need of the hour to look into the multiple ways they can balance the proportion.

However, if you are one of the companies whose gender equality plan is on spot from the day of existence, you won’t have to adopt these last minute, expensive approaches to attract women workforce. All you will have to do is abide by the maternity benefits norms shared by the labor law, and you’ll be able to keep your women workforce invested.  Furthermore, you might also want to read about benefits of health insurance for startups and how it can improve growth.

Here were the four factors that can help you decide whether you would like to get maternity covered in your group health plan. If you do choose to go with maternity in insurance for your women employees, get in touch with us.

We will offer you the best group health insurance plans that won’t eat into your working capital.