How should I decide whether a group legal plan is right for my company?
Any employer and any employee group can benefit from a group legal plan. The legal plan benefit is very broad in terms of its appeal, so there’s really no profile or particular demographic of employees that can benefit from it.
Two of our biggest sponsors are JPMorgan Chase and Target. JPMorgan Chase, I think it would be fair to say, has a typically higher income employee base than Target. And, yet, both of them have very popular and successful legal plan offerings. What does vary a little bit is what people use the legal plan for. The higher income groups might use the plan more for buying and selling homes, getting wills, doing estate planning. The lower income groups might be using the legal plan more for debt problems, advice on leases, things of that nature.
While the nature of the legal issues being addressed might vary from one employer group to another, the usage rates do not really vary much. In the end, there’s something in there for everybody.
But whether or not they should offer a group legal plan is dependent upon the state of development of their benefit program, generally. Companies — once upon a time — had only employer-paid benefits, and then they began to shift some of that cost to employees. Then they looked for what other options could they offer since they had the infrastructure for their benefit program set up in terms of how enrollment works and all the communications materials and so on. Then it made sense to offer employees as many choices as they can. That’s when things like auto and home insurance and legal plans and critical illness really started to take off.
For any employer who has an established employee benefit program, especially one that includes options for employee-paid benefits, they should have a legal plan.
In contrast, smaller employers might not really have much in the way of employee benefits. They’ll have life insurance and health insurance and maybe disability insurance and probably employer-paid. They probably need to pay more attention to their benefit program generally and have it evolve to offering not just legal plans but lots of voluntary benefits: critical illness insurance, auto insurance, home insurance, dental insurance.
How can a group legal plan benefit my business?
In terms of your benefit package being something that attracts and re
ta
ins the best employees, you don’t really gain much competitive value from the basic core benefits since all employers are offering them. It’s the employers that do more than offer just life insurance and health insurance that really add value to their benefits program in terms of attracting and retaining the best employees.
There’s also a lot of evidence lately that employers are now talking a lot about how having a benefit like a legal plan improves employee productivity. One finding was that 84 percent of employers now report that employee productivity is a very important benefits objective.
So there’s been much more focus recently on that aspect, from the employer’s point of view, that I’m going to offer this legal plan not just because I don’t have to pay for it, No. 1, so that’s nice. The employee pays for it. It makes my benefit program more competitive, so that’s nice. But now they’re also talking about if people have easy, affordable access to help, they’re more productive at work. In these economic times, this seems to be really coming into focus.
Years ago when we were selling legal plans to employers, we’d say, ‘If your people had access to legal care, they’d be less distracted. They would miss less work because they wouldn’t have to take time off to go see a lawyer or go find a lawyer or be worried about their foreclosure or their divorce if they knew they had somebody helping them out.’ I think it’s finally starting to hit home to employers.
How to reach: Hyatt Legal Plans, (800) 423-0300 or www.legalplans.com