If all labor has dignity, employers must recognize that what furthers the soul does not feed the body, that spiritual recompense is not a dispensation from the laws governing labor: that worker retention is every employer’s job; that this job is just; that just compensation is an achievable end through the available means of life insurance. If employers want assurances from workers, if employers want to ensure workers do not leave their jobs, life insurance is a solution for management and labor.
Life insurance levels the scales of competition, allowing employers to retain talent without bankrupting themselves in the process. Because of the flexibility that life insurance offers, employers can write and underwriters can issue policies that appeal to workers. The benefits are as diverse as any policy of workplace diversity, addressing the needs of specific workers—exceeding the needs of individual workers—by honoring workers through a combination of words and actions.
If, for example, an employer wants to introduce a deferred compensation plan and retain workers, awarding tax-free bonuses that mature within a set timeframe, life insurance expedites this plan. Life insurance makes this plan possible.
To make this plan probable, to increase the probability that employers will introduce such a plan—that takes communication. The onus is on insurers to tell employers the facts about life insurance. The onus is not expensive, though any such expense is defensible, because the price of success is responsibility. The responsibility to inform is a price insurers should acknowledge. The responsibility to lead is a price insurers should accept.
Communication works to answer the concerns of employers, whose questions include: Why invest in recruiting and training workers when someone else can profit from this investment? Why hire anyone when there is no way to stop everyone from joining another employer?
Both questions speak to matters of risk. Both questions speak to that which is containable but unavoidable. Both questions are reducible to a single question: What should employers do about uncertainty? In so many words, deal with it.
If employers want to lower risk, they should present workers with the certainty life insurance provides. If insurers want to expand their influence, they should present employers with the clarity workers deserve. If workers want to maximize their worth, they should be party to this presentation.
See also: Behavioral Science and Life Insurance
Because work is fluid and workers are mobile, the nature of work is as dynamic as the seasons and as unpredictable as the weather. What is predictable is what a life insurance policy does, when it takes effect, how much it pays and to whom it applies.
What is also predictable is the need among employers to retain their most valuable workers.
By this standard, the face value of a life insurance policy is not the total value of a life insurance policy. Not when a policy yields dividends by boosting loyalty and improving morale.
By any standard, life insurance works to the benefit of employers and workers.
