Of all the concerns that business owners and senior executives have, the biggest one appears to be related to employee benefits, a new survey shows.
According to a new poll conducted by the recruitment firm Adecco Staffing, which queried 500 company executives throughout the country, one-third of business owners said that the cost and determination of providing healthcare benefits to their workers was their top challenge.
Joyce Russell, president of Adecco Staffing, noted that this poll speaks volumes, as these issues were major concerns for business owners prior to the financial crisis that led to the recession.
"While there certainly have been political and economic changes since the recession started in 2007, it's interesting to see that senior executives face the same challenges they did five years ago," said Russell. "Business leaders continuing to find competitive healthcare and salary packages as their two biggest challenges calls attention to the impact that the economy and changing regulations can have for an organization."
She added that these situations often put business owners between a rock and a hard place, requiring them to address the HR compliance issues that stem from healthcare reform at the expense of addressing other major issues that can serve as obstacles to growth.
Other significant concerns for business owners, according to the survey, were also human resource related. Adecco notes that salary and compensation was a close second in terms of how pressing of an issue it was.
Though small business owners may be exempted from providing health benefits under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, employers that will continue to offer employer-based coverage may want to highlight January 1 on their calendar. Starting then, employers will need to report the overall cost of employer-provided coverage in their Summary of Benefits, which should be distributed to employees, to be in compliance with the PPACA.
