As an insurance broker, it’s your job to act as an intermediary between an insurance company, such as our team at SBMA Benefits, and the companies offering benefits to their employers. The goal of most insurance brokers is to improve and increase employee engagement.
Employee engagement refers to the number of employees that opt-in to receive benefits through your offerings, but you know all of this. One of the greatest questions that many brokers face often, however, is how to get employer groups to engage.
Improving levels of employee engagement starts with the employers they work for. Employers serve as your gateway to their teams. While this is a benefit to brokers in that it’s not your responsibility to go directly to the employees, it’s also a challenge because you don’t have the luxury to go directly to employees.
In many cases, increasing enrollment in benefits isn’t at the forefront of employers’ minds. Their responsibility is to ensure that their employees have access to the benefits they need, not to push them to enroll in them. In some cases, pushing enrollment may not be on the agenda of business owners because depending on their plan type, more enrollees may hold them accountable for paying higher employee premiums and enrollment fees.
Each business is slightly different and should be approached as such. While some businesses may only pay the administration fees and not cover any amount of the cost of coverage for their employees, others may offer to pay a certain percentage of their employees’ monthly benefit costs.