Offering health insurance to your remote, international teams is a fantastic way to attract top-tier talent, foster employee satisfaction for reduced turnover, and minimize workflow disruptions due to unmanaged sicknesses and injuries. More than that, health insurance shows that you, as an employer, care about your people.
However, managing healthcare for global employees comes with its share of complexities. Varying local regulations, divergent healthcare systems, and diverse employee needs make international healthcare a wildly dynamic topic. It is often too much for centralized HR teams to manage, especially those at small- and mid-sized companies.
This post explores how your growing business can successfully offer health insurance to remote employees with a little know-how and the help of an Employer of Record (EOR) platform.
Understanding Global Remote Health Insurance
Health insurance differs
from country to country – sometimes slightly, sometimes significantly. Some countries, like the UK, Canada, and Australia, offer a universal health care scheme with notable exceptions in areas such as dental care. Some countries mix public and private healthcare. Other countries provide no public healthcare whatsoever. In some countries, as in the Middle East, employers are legally mandated to offer healthcare insurance to their employees; in others, they aren’t.
It’s imperative, therefore, to understand what you must offer, what you should offer to stay competitive (i.e., supplementary plans), and if and how you must withhold employee contributions. If this sounds complicated, don’t worry; in the final section, we cover how to streamline the process with a global EOR.
Reimbursement and Stipend Plans
Before delving into how to offer traditional plans to remote employees, let’s cover a couple of alternatives: reimbursements and stipends.
Reimbursement plans involve an employer reimbursing their employees for incurred medical expenses. It’s a sly workaround for businesses that don’t want to deal with the intricacies of a formal plan. However, there are a few snags. Some employees are reluctant to accept reimbursement plans, fearing that their employer will not pay the full amount for their expenses; therefore, these plans often scare away top talent. Next, healthcare reimbursement plans may not work in every country, including those that mandate employer coverage.
Another alternative is a stipend plan, in which the employer offers a stipend for employees to purchase their own private coverage. Like reimbursement, it’s an attractive plan for employers who want to sidestep the administrative complexities and compliance considerations of traditional plans. Yet, once again, it may discourage top talent and face red tape in certain countries.
Partnering with an Employer of Record
Partnering with an EOR is the best way to offer traditional group coverage to a diverse mix of employees in various countries.
The best platforms offer an AI agent for global HR that can answer your global employment law questions and generate compliant employment contracts in seconds.. Crucially, the best EOR platforms leverage sophisticated technology platforms and services to streamline mandatory and optional benefits management, giving you a turnkey solution for offering localized benefits packages.
Book a demo with an EOR platform to learn more about streamlining benefits management for your international remote employees.
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