Retirement Plan Most Common Employee Benefit

In addition, 98.2% of employers participating in the Benefits USA 2011/2012 survey offer dental insurance, while vision insurance is offered by 84.5%. Short- and long-term disability is offered by 87.5% and 94.3% of companies, respectively. Nearly 50% offer accident insurance.

Life insurance coverage is also a common offering made by companies to their employees. Nearly 98% of employers offer basic life insurance. Seventy percent use multiples of an employee’s pay to determine the maximum death benefit beneficiaries will receive. More than 43% of the companies using this method set the death benefit at one full year of an employee’s pay, while 30.5% set the benefit at two year’s pay.

“Many companies were forced to scale back their total compensation packages during the height of the recession and benefits were not spared those cutbacks,” said Amy Kaminski, Director of Marketing for Compdata Surveys. “Now, as companies are looking to expand their workforce again, they realize the need to offer a wide range of benefits in order to remain competitive in attracting and retaining top talent.”

Only 25.8% of employers report offering elder care benefits to employees, including flexible schedules, long-term care insurance discounts, and referral services. The press release pointed out that a study conducted in June by the MetLife Mature Market Institute found the number of adult children caring for aging parents has tripled over the last 15 years, and providing care has cost these caregivers an estimated $3 trillion in lost wages, pension, and Social Security benefits. As the aging population continues to increase, it may become important for employers to evaluate their benefit packages to include this growing class of dependents, Compdata said.

The Benefits USA 2011/2012 survey collected information from nearly 4,500 benefit plans covering over six million employees across the country.