Healthcare remains a key benefit to employee retention, with nearly half the workers recently polled admitting they would bolt to a new job if the position had comparable cost and coverage to their medical current benefits.
“The Congressional Budget Office estimates that, because of the Affordable Care Act, workers may “choose to supply less labor” equivalent to two million full-time jobs, between 2017 and 2024,” said a statement from Securian Financial Group, the firm that conducted the study titled Job lock: Hanging on for health insurance.“This prompts the question: How many workers see themselves as “job locked” – reluctant to change jobs for fear of losing health insurance?”
The survey polled 767 Americans that were employed full-time (94 percent) or part-time (6 percent) and currently had health insurance. Respondents were asked whether they would quit their jobs if they could buy health insurance comparable in cost and coverage to the policies they currently have through their employers.
A whopping 40 percent said they would quit their current job if they could find comparable coverage and more than half (56 percent) say they have considered leaving their jobs but didn’t because they didn’t want to give up their health insurance.
Interestingly, a large majority of the respondents say they liked the work they do in their current jobs “but many of them dream about doing something else,” according to the report’s summary.
CFOs and other financial executives have been struggling with maintaining healthcare as a key employee benefit since the adoption of the Affordable Care Act (ACA). A recent Bank of America/Merrill Lynch survey found nearly two-thirds of CFOs said their companies will keep their existing healthcare plans and that 13 percent expect to offer a “slimmed-down version of current benefits” and shift more costs to employees.