Adam - As you've seen health insurance is a big thing. You've asked how much is "enough", that's another "depends" answer. Since I know that medical insurance is $700/mo for a decent HMO (and have paid for it), I was tickled to take a medical plan that was $150/paycheck.
What you can offer your employees is going to vary based on your fiscal and physical resources. The things I call "standard": - Free drinks (coffee, water, tea, maybe soft drinks) - Book allowance (reimbursed) - Company outings / picnics / parties (quarterly or annualy) - Disability: Breaks down into long term and short term. Takes care of the employee financially if something happens off work time. Short term covers something like 30 or 60 days, long term is beyond that. - Worker's Comp: Takes care of employees if something happens to them on work time. For the disability and worker's comp it is usually required by the state to have , you buy it as a business insurance plan. The things I call "expected": - Medical insurance. This is extremely tough given costs. I've worked for companies that were able to offer it as an included bennie and for companies that made me pay for part of ot. You might investigate offering a HSA (Health Savings Account) with an annual "pay-in". More on that idea in a minute. If you go for a HMO or PPO then make sure that it doesn't have some insane deductable. - Dental insurance. Expensive and not always worth the trouble. Up here (New York) it's limited to $1000 coverage per person and there's always a copay or deductible. - Traning: This can be anything from weekly in-house traning to reimbursed or paid in advance... Seminars / conferences or even college classes. - Retirement: 401k with any kind of a match is good. If you're publically traded consider a stock purchase plan. Pensions are DOA these days. - Vacation - Telecommuting capabilities: Even if you only offer it for "emergencies" it's an easy thing to set up and encourages productivity outside the office. The HSA is a new thing that is coming up as a medical benifit concept. It's actually two different plans, one high-deductible ($3000) insurance plan and a money market savings account with a credit card. The concept is that the employee puts a max of $3000 into the money market account pre-tax. The money market is used to pay for the deductible. That's the kind of plan that I'm on right now and compared to the PPO that I am offered otherwise it saves me around $1200 per year. The up-side is that if the $3000 is not spent in a year it *stays there*. The downside is that if something happens and there is not enough money in the account to cover the deductible, it comes out of the employee's pocket. As an interesting mix you might offer the employee a HSA and "pre-load" the account with however much you want. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~| Introducing the Fusion Authority Quarterly Update. 80 pages of hard-hitting, up-to-date ColdFusion information by your peers, delivered to your door four times a year. http://www.fusionauthority.com/quarterly Archive: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/CF-Community/message.cfm/messageid:216625 Subscription: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/CF-Community/subscribe.cfm Unsubscribe: http://www.houseoffusion.com/cf_lists/unsubscribe.cfm?user=89.70.5
