For employers looking to attract and retain young talent, listen up: Health insurance plays a major role in who will agree to work for a firm. According to a survey of American employees, one in three millennial workers has turned down a job offer due to insufficient or lackluster health insurance.
The survey sponsored by Anthem Life Insurance Company found that 27% of U.S. respondents in other age brackets responded that they too declined job offers due to insurance that didn’t impress them.
While basic insurance and dental coverage are regularly provided in employee insurance offerings, disability insurance appears to lag as a concern for employees. Of survey respondents who did not have disability insurance, 53% reported lacking coverage because either their employer did not offer it and 32% felt it was too expensive.
Anthem Life Insurance Company president Mike Wozny was not surprised that the survey indicated millennials were very motivated by benefits packages.
The survey reveals that “younger employees are paying attention and looking at the quality of the benefits package and not just, do I have a medical plan and is there a dental plan available for me?” he says.
As more millennials begin to get married, purchase homes and start families, they are slowly warming to the idea of disability coverage, Wozny says. He adds that he sees younger workers are looking beyond employee perks like taking their dog to work, massages at their desks and other concierge types of services to other employee benefits.
“They are asking, ‘What happens if something goes wrong and I’m unable to work? How do I protect my income now that I've got a mortgage to pay and a family?’’ says Wozny. “So, those more traditional benefits become much more important as they age, and millennials are asking for a broader coverage besides traditional medical, vision and dental.”
That said, employers need to change up their insurance offerings if they want to attract and retain talent, Wozny says.
“As we look at some of the high-tech firms and the new types of benefits that they’re offering, that’s put pressure on employers to be more creative and try to come up with new insurance offerings. I think that's where what's driving a lot of this,” he says.
“It does look like some of the pressures coming from the images that people see from some of the dot-com and the high tech companies are doing to attract those high talent individuals into their organizations,” says Wozny. “I think it's spilling over into other areas and other businesses.”
The Anthem survey also found that millennials are more likely than older workers to have engaged in long-term financial planning over the past year. Twenty-nine percent of millennials responded that they have conducted long-term financial planning, compared to 19% of 35 to 54 year-olds.
The Anthem survey was conducted online with 905 US workers on March 15 and 16.
