Growing your business is like growing your family! Your business is like a baby in it that needs nurturing, commitment, sacrifice, persistence, protection, and planning. Your business is also the cornerstone that will provide your own family and those of your employees, with the financial means they need.

You chose to be an entrepreneur, it means that you are a visionary with strong will. Your business succeeds solely due to your efforts and that of your carefully selected team. Your employees, are your biggest asset!

In this era of gratification generation, making sure that your good employees stay with you is key for your business to grow and thrive. Attracting and retaining employees in the current business environment, has become a major challenge for all business owners. When you provide employees with a versatile set of benefits, your business operates much more smoothly by ensuring your employees are more relaxed, productive and happy. Providing benefits demonstrates to your employees an appreciation and gratitude for the talent they provide and that you care about their families' wellbeing.

There are several types of employee benefits:

Health Insurance: With the high cost of health insurance and the rates of participation, Insurance Companies now are producing new kinds of health insurance that have in mind reduce the cost of health insurance coverage for small business owners. It is a good idea to sit down with your financial professional and talk about how you and your employees can save money while being protected with a well-structured health insurance coverage.

Elective Insurance coverages: Voluntary Employee Benefits (VEB) help your employees to protect their family, finances and future. VEB provide stability and peace of mind to your employees. According to statistics, 83% of workers with healthcare coverage would enroll in voluntary benefits without expecting their employer to pay for it.

Retirement Benefits: Retirement benefits, such as 401k or defined benefits plan, have very positive impact on retaining employees. More and more work applicants look the company's retirement benefits to decide if they want to apply for a position.

Executive Benefits: Key employees are normally a highly paid person responsible to make managerial decisions or have a significant impact on the company's revenues. Therefore, the sudden absense of a key employee, due to death, can disrupt business in many ways including; sales, production, managerial abilities, or missed opportunities. The loss of a key employee may cause the company the inability to make payments to creditors, deliver production on time, maintain general stability in a company. Having a contingency strategy is critical for the success and possibly even continuation of your business.

Business Succession Planning: You may have not given much thought to what succession planning can provide. It is totally understandable. You and your partners have worked for many hours worrying about the growth of your business. But what could happen if one of the partners were to suddenly expire? An orderly transition of ownership in the event of a partner loss could be the difference between a continuation of an ongoing flow of the business, and facing delays and frustration of a probate process in addition to the emotional loss of a partner.