Employee benefits portal, WorkLife, has joined forces with group insurance provider Unum to add a range of health protection benefits to its online platform.
WorkLife customers will be able to offer its workforce group life insurance, dental plans and critical illness cover at competitive rates. The unique offering will allow businesses to put benefits in place quickly, get a fixed price in a matter of minutes with no medical questions or underwriting, and choose simple solutions from a range of set cover levels.
As part of the partnership, WorkLife’s 2020 Small Business Monitor found that health and insurance products were among the most sought-after benefits for SMEs, with 22% of employers wanting to offer them over the next six months. However, smaller businesses have historically struggled to offer group protection benefits owing to challenges surrounding cost and scale. Unum’s offering is designed to meet the needs of SMEs and offers solutions for health, wellbeing and financial protection.
Rob Marshall, managing director of WorkLife, said: “Like us, Unum is dedicated to serving the SME market – this shared aim and understanding of the challenges faced by smaller businesses made them the perfect partner for us in the group protection space.
“At a time when many people’s salaries are having to stretch even further, benefits such as life, critical illness or dental cover can offer vital peace of mind when unexpected health concerns arise. The fact that Unum puts such focus on making these valuable, but seemingly complex, products easy to access and understand was hugely important to us, and we look forward to working with them on helping more SMEs provide a greater level of security to their workers as we move through this uncertain period.”
Glenn Thompson, customer solutions director at Unum, added: “It’s more important than ever to make valuable employee benefits accessible to small businesses and partnering with WorkLife means we can do just that. Our simple benefits take out the complexity so employers can put in-demand benefits in place quickly – with little administration and no underwriting – which might have felt unattainable in the past.”
The WorkLife platform is normally offered to companies at £2 per employee per month, but has been made available to firms free of charge for the rest of 2020, to help firms who want to support employees but may be struggling to do so as a result of the coronavirus pandemic.