The ongoing BLR/HR Daily Advisor Employee Fringe Benefit Survey Series recently queried readers about disability and group insurance. Seventy-seven percent of respondents offer short-term disability, and 82 percent offer long-term disability. Meanwhile, 5 percent offer group auto insurance, 5 percent offer group homeowners’ insurance, and 13 percent offer group prepaid legal services.
Seventy-seven percent of respondents report that their organization requires a waiting period of at least 7 days before short-term disability insurance coverage begins, which represents a significant increase over the 65 percent of companies that reported requiring the same waiting period in BLR’s Survey of Employee Benefits in late 2006.
In the most recent survey, most of the companies responding pay a short-term benefit of 60 percent to 69 percent of weekly pay for 13 weeks or less, funded primarily by conventional insurance.
The trend toward longer waiting periods was also found for long-term disability insurance, with 94 percent of respondents requiring a delay of 3 months or more, compared to 80 percent of respondents in the earlier previous survey.
The current survey included more than 400 responses and was conducted by BLR’s HR Daily Advisor in March-April 2010.