Why Companies Should Offer Health Benefits to Part-Time Workers
Part-time employment contributes heavily to gender inequities and overall inequality, since most part-time workers are women and since most part-time jobs don’t come with benefits packages. Women are more likely to work part-time because they are often burdened with greater domestic and child-rearing responsibilities than men. Providing health benefits to part-time employees can go a long way toward lessening the gender pay gap.
Yet if you’re a business owner, you may be wondering: what’s the cost-benefit analysis of doing so? Can you afford it? Should you?
Here are a few reasons why offering health benefits to part-time workers is ultimately good for business:
Good benefits help to build good company reputations. Employer review sites like Glassdoor often show up on the first page of online searches for companies, and health benefits are a major factor in how employees rate their place of work. Remember, all your workers use social media, and part-time workers can be a great resource for referring new talent. Investing in health benefits for them means more of your employees are likely to have—and share—positive opinions of your business.
High-quality benefits improve talent acquisition, retention, and productivity. Offering competitive health benefits for all employees helps companies successfully compete for new talent, particularly in the wake of the pandemic and new worker priorities. It also improves employee morale, loyalty, and retention, preventing costly turnover. Helping part-time employees with preventative wellness costs additionally reduces their likelihood of missing work for health reasons, which boosts productivity.
Offering health benefits can be affordable. Employers no longer have to choose between traditional health insurance and no health benefits. Although good health insurance is the ideal goal, you can start with affordable tools like health savings accounts (HSAs) and tiered pay-based benefits structures. These and similar options can mitigate healthcare costs for employees as you work toward offering full health benefits. Plus, the tax benefits of offering health insurance can off-set much of the cost of providing these benefits.
Protect Reproductive Health with the Pro Repro Playbook
Pro Repro equips businesses—particularly SMEs, middle-market companies, and non-profits—with strategies to protect the reproductive health of the 75 million American workers who can become pregnant.
Spearheaded byGender IDEAL, we support and advocate for the advancement of women’s economic empowerment, worker rights, and workplace equity. We have created a variety of resources so that companies can ensure the economic security and reproductive health protections of their extended workforce. Download our playbook to take action today!