The short answer: small businesses usually look at five kinds of benefits: group health, group dental and vision, an ICHRA (a fixed monthly allowance employees spend on their own health plan), employee-paid voluntary coverage, and group life and disability. Most end up with a mix, one or two carried by the business and the rest offered at the employee's own cost. Groups can start at 2 employees, and voluntary benefits cost the business nothing to offer. The Offer Letter Test lets you switch each one on and see how your job posting reads.
The benefits small teams look at, and what each one does
- Group health (major medical). Employer-sponsored health coverage for your team. The business picks the plan design and how much of the premium it pays, employees enroll (family members too, where offered), and the owner can sit on the same plan. It is not quoted online: group pricing depends on your team's census and state.
- Group dental and vision. The benefits employees use every year: cleanings, fillings, glasses and exams. The business can fund it, share the cost, or simply make it available. It is often the easiest first benefit to add. It is not medical coverage, and waiting periods on major dental work can apply depending on group size and prior coverage.
- ICHRA (defined contribution). The business sets a fixed monthly allowance per employee, and each employee picks their own individual health plan and is reimbursed up to that amount. You control the budget; they control the plan. It is not one group plan everyone shares, and it has setup and documentation rules, so an advisor confirms it fits before you commit.
- Voluntary (worksite) benefits. Accident, hospital-cash, critical-illness and life coverage employees choose and pay for themselves through payroll, often at group rates they could not get on their own. The business offers it but does not fund it. It is not health insurance; it pays cash on specific events.
- Group life and disability. A base amount of life insurance for every employee, and income protection if someone cannot work because of illness or injury. Enrollment is usually simple, often with no medical questions up to a set amount for eligible groups. Base group life is a foundation, not a full family plan, and disability replaces part of pay for a defined period.
Availability, plan designs and eligibility vary by state and group size. If you are weighing a group plan against an allowance, our article on a group plan or letting employees buy their own walks that choice side by side.
"We're too small for benefits" usually is not true
Two people is a group, and many small-group plans start there. ICHRA works at any size. Voluntary benefits ask nothing of the business at all. Your team size decides which path fits; it almost never decides whether one exists.
And benefits are not only about the next hire. An employee covered on a spouse's plan may never ask about benefits, until the spouse's job changes and the family needs coverage. Coverage you offer, even one someone does not use today, is a reason people stay when life changes.
How the Offer Letter Test works
The Offer Letter Test takes about a minute and asks for nothing personal. Here is exactly what it does.
- Type the job you are hiring for. Say "Service technician" or "Front desk." Both sample postings take that title.
- Pick your team size, including you. The posting's subtitle changes with it, from a first hire to a growing team.
- Pick a monthly amount per employee. This is your number, a band you would be comfortable with, not a price. "Not sure" is an option too.
- Switch benefits on and off. Health, dental, vision, life, disability, accident and hospital cash, and a retirement match note. (We do not set up retirement plans; the note is there because candidates scan for it.)
- Watch the posting change. Two postings sit side by side: yours today, with "Benefits: not listed", and yours with a benefits line written from what you switched on.
Under the postings, a star read from 0 to 5 shows how the posting reads to a candidate. It is our read, not a survey, and it only reflects which benefits are on, never what they cost. Below that, "What this would take" maps your choices to the quote paths that make sense: group medical from a team of 2, an allowance when you set a monthly number, dental and vision as a simple first step, and employee-paid voluntary benefits when the budget is tight. If you pick "Just me", it says plainly that group medical generally needs at least 2 people on the census, so the talk is individual coverage for you now with the group path ready the day you hire.
You can copy the benefits line straight into your posting. Or press Start my discovery, and your team size, budget band and benefits carry into the discovery sheet so you do not type them twice.
What the test does not do
It is a way to think, not a quote. It shows nothing about what any benefit costs. The budget band is a number you chose, and a licensed advisor sizes every option for real, because group pricing depends on your team's census and state. Every group is quoted personally.
Picture it
You have been trying to fill the same spot for six weeks. You finally find her: good references, lives ten minutes away, clearly knows the work. She says she will think about it. Two days later she writes back, kindly, that she took another offer. Same pay, same kind of work. The other posting had one extra line: health, dental and vision. You never had a chance to answer it, because your posting never said anything at all.
Now picture the other version. Before you post the job, you open the Offer Letter Test, type the title, switch on dental and vision, and see your posting side by side with the one that says "Benefits: not listed." You fill in the discovery sheet, an advisor comes back with what each path would take for a team your size, and the line on your posting is real. When she reads it, the tie-breaker is yours.
Where to start
Run the test with the job you are hiring for right now, then send the discovery sheet. Blanks are fine. You do not need employee names, birthdays or Social Security numbers to ask; those come later, securely, only if you move forward. We handle enrollment and the changes with you, so the plan does not become a second job. To see the group plans available now, visit our group health section.
This is general education, not legal or tax advice and not a guarantee of coverage. Rules vary by state, and coverages, availability and rates vary by carrier and state and can change at any time.