How Non-Profits Can Offer Great Employee Benefit Packages
Non-profits often have difficulty offering high pay for their employees.
They can try to make up for it by promoting the auxiliary benefits of working for a charitable organization, but in the long run, morale can run low if employees aren’t compensated correctly for their efforts.
But, non-profits can offer good employee benefit packages without spending a fortune – here’s how.
Find Ways to Offer Health Insurance
Health insurance costs have been going up at several times the rate of inflation for years. This has led to many non-profits being unable to provide health insurance to their employees, with many employees being forced to sign up for Medicaid instead.
What every non-profit can do is join a cooperative arrangement with other non-profits to share the cost of health insurance plans. There are versions of this that administer health insurance, retirement plans, and even Human Resources.
Yet another option is offering a Health Reimbursement Arrangement. You could offer a fixed contribution to employees toward the cost of privately purchased health insurance.
They can buy the insurance they want, including privately enrolling in a health sharing ministry for instance.
Offer an EAP
An EAP or employee assistance plan is an employer-provided program to provide support to employees. This includes but is not limited to backup childcare arrangements, drug and alcohol addiction counseling, family counseling, financial advisers, and wellness programs.
One benefit of the EAP is that you hand off responsibility to professional counselors and the cost of their services is reduced for your employees because their salary is covered by all the other groups paying for the EAP.
You remove the legal risks of a manager trying to counsel someone with mental illness or giving potentially illegal advice.
And when the services are provided by professionals, you don’t get workplace gossip as one employee talks about another’s issues while trying to determine how to address it.
Provide Amazing Retirement Plans
Set up a 403B for your employees so that they have a retirement plan and fund it to the maximum allowed by law for all of your employees. Don’t go with the financial services providers that push everyone into high-cost annuities.
Another option is to set up a Simple IRA. They have very low administrative costs, they’re easy to manage, they provide a wide array of investment options, and contributions for employer and employee are both tax-deferred as they are for a 401K or 403B.
The downsides of a Simple IRA include lower maximum employee contributions than 401Ks and 403Bs, less freedom in determining what you match for your employees, and you cannot offer a “Roth” option.
However, whichever option you choose, providing multiple retirement options and maximizing the employer contributions can make your organization very attractive to potential employees while retaining those you have.
To Sum Up
Offer incentives to your employees to perform and remain loyal is a must if you want to keep them engaged and happy.
If anything, try to at least offer them an EAP to provide support in difficult circumstances and ensure that your employees have at least one way to invest in a viable retirement plan.
About the Author Jess Nielsen
Jess has spent years travelling the world full-time. Nothing else comes close to the reaches of this emotive activity...