The benefits package is the second-largest line on your P&L. Most owners have never had it explained.

Group health insurance

The medical plan, and the decision about whether to have one.

Without it — Recruiting against employers who offer it becomes the constraint on hiring.

Group dental insurance

Preventive, basic and major dental, usually with an annual maximum.

Without it — The most-used and least-expensive benefit is also the most missed when absent.

Group vision insurance

Exams, frames, lenses and contacts.

Without it — Cheap enough that its absence reads as an oversight rather than a decision.

Group life and AD&D

A death benefit, usually a multiple of salary, plus accidental death and dismemberment.

Without it — A death in service leaves the employer improvising and the family with nothing.

Group disability insurance

Short and long-term income replacement when an employee cannot work.

Without it — An off-the-job injury pays nothing: workers compensation only responds to work-related ones.

Voluntary & supplemental benefits

Employee-paid coverage: supplemental life, accident, critical illness, hospital indemnity.

Without it — A benefits package with no employer cost is left on the table.

Fiduciary liability

Coverage for whoever runs the plan, picks the funds and signs the documents.

Without it — ERISA makes plan decisions personal. A participant who says the fees were too high is suing the owner, not the plan.

How small can a business be and still offer group benefits?

In most states one employee besides the owner is enough for a small-group medical plan, and the small-group market runs to 50 employees (100 in a handful of states). Below that threshold the more interesting option is usually an HRA rather than a group plan: an employer of any size can reimburse employees tax-free for individual coverage through an ICHRA, or up to a statutory cap through a QSEHRA if it has fewer than 50 employees and no group plan. That route did not exist before 2017 and is still the thing small employers most often have not been told about.

What does a benefits broker actually do?

Three things worth paying for and one that is not. Worth paying for: marketing the plan to carriers each year so the renewal is tested rather than accepted, running the enrollment so HR is not fielding it, and being the person an employee calls when a claim is denied. Not worth paying for: an annual spreadsheet of quotes with no advice attached. Broker compensation on group benefits is generally paid by the carrier and built into the rates, so the plan does not get cheaper by going direct, which means an employer without a broker is paying for one either way.

When should we start on a renewal?

90 to 120 days out. Carriers release renewal rates roughly 60 to 90 days before the effective date, and a meaningful increase leaves very little room to market the plan, get quotes back, run a comparison and hold an open enrollment, so employers who start when the renewal letter arrives have already lost most of their options. If the increase is large, the alternatives worth pricing are a different network, a higher-deductible plan paired with an HRA, or a level-funded arrangement, and each takes time to underwrite.