If your company is looking for a way to offer additional benefits to your employees without adding any costs to your business's bottom line, then you will be happy to learn that this is possible by starting a voluntary benefits program.

Voluntary benefits are paid for by your workers and are appreciated by employees because they offer access to group rates that are often much cheaper than trying to obtain the same coverage as an individual.

The most popular voluntary benefits that your company can offer employees include:

• accident insurance
• critical illness insurance
• disability insurance
• financial counseling
• ID theft protection
• legal services
• life insurance

In addition, you can also offer your employees pet health insurance as a voluntary benefit. Follow these tips to ensure that your company offers voluntary benefits that your staff will appreciate and utilize:

Ask Your Employees What Voluntary Benefits They Would Like

To build the best voluntary benefits program for your company, you should start by asking your employees what benefits they would like to have available to them. If you own a large company, then you can take a sampling of employees from a variety of departments to gauge the benefits they would like to see offered.

Offer Your Employees Voluntary Benefits that Provide Value and Are Customizable

Voluntary benefits are often ignored by employees because they are either not customizable or because employees do not immediately see their value.

Giving your company's employees a wide variety of different voluntary benefits that they can choose from, based upon their needs, helps them to appreciate your company for offering a variety of options. Since your company's employees are different ages and at different stages of their lives, offering a variety of options gives each employee products that can improve their own lives.

Providing people with ample information about each benefit, its costs, and its advantages will help your employees to choose those options that best meet their needs.

Present Offered Voluntary Benefits with Open Enrollment Materials

One of the best ways to get your company's employees excited about and participating in your voluntary benefits program is by presenting them with materials about each benefit when you distribute information about the other benefits your company offers during the open enrollment period. 

Many of your employees will meet with their spouses to discuss changes in health insurance for the following year during the open enrollment period, so this is a perfect time to give out any available information that you have for each voluntary benefit your company offers. For more information, visit All About Voluntary.