Providing employees access to a legal insurance plan will help them save money on attorney fees, which average $343 an hour. (Photo: Shutterstock)

A strong voluntary benefits package is becoming more critical for employers as they compete to attract and retain top talent. Employees have come to expect lots of benefit choices. In fact, one survey found that the majority of employees are willing to bear the cost if that gives them more benefit options.

Voluntary benefits that are trending this year help address a wide variety of medical, emotional, financial and legal needs. One of those benefits, legal insurance, is a versatile and powerful benefit that every person―no matter their generation, age, relationship status or gender―can use.

Related: The evolution of voluntary: Expanding voluntary benefit offerings

How? It's useful for proactive planning like creating a will—which everyone needs, and it's also there when an employee encounters an unplanned legal issue like a child support dispute, bankruptcy or drivers license suspension.

The common legal issues employees deal with include:

• Creating a will or trust
• Traffic tickets or moving violations that could lead to license suspension
• Child custody, child support and other family law issues
• Divorce
• Dealing with debt collectors
• Property line and other neighbor disputes
• Bankruptcy
• Issues with bad contractor work or incomplete auto repairs
• Buying or selling a home

Providing employees access to a legal insurance plan will help them save money on attorney fees, which average $343 an hour. When you consider the average number of attorney hours for something like buying or selling a house is six hours, the fees add up fast. But with legal insurance, network attorney fees are 100 percent paid in full for most covered matters.

Employees appreciate a benefits package with lots of options―but if they aren't aware the options exist, how can they credit their employers with providing them a valuable and varied benefits package?

There are seven things you can do to make legal insurance more visible and increase participation in the plan. Many of these apply to any voluntary benefits you offer.

1. Have employees enroll in legal insurance at the same time as core benefits. This will increase visibility and raise awareness.
2. Make payment easy with payroll deduction. Simplify the process and give employees one less thing to think about.
3. Enroll on the same website as the health insurance benefit. Participation will be higher if employees use the same enrollment platform for benefits.
4. Communicate early and often. Participation rates are higher when employees receive plan details at least one month before open enrollment. Use a variety of touchpoints, e.g., company intranet, emails and print brochures. Be sure to take advantage of enrollment materials from the benefits provider.
5. Offer employees two plan options. When multiple legal insurance plans are offered, more employees choose the “plus” plan than the “base” plan. This translates to a better premium in the long run.
6. Make regular changes to the plan. Your provider should be offering plan changes and upgrades regularly based on employee demand. No matter the change, participation tends to increase.
7. Be an advocate for the benefit. The more employees hear about legal insurance from a trusted person at their own company, the more likely they are to enroll.

Employees expect a lot from your benefits package these days. Once you add a voluntary benefit like legal insurance to your package, make sure you're setting employees up to understand and use the benefit so they can appreciate the valuable choice you're giving them.

Check out these other popular voluntary benefits:

• Hot voluntary products and platforms
• Student loan benefits more popular with workers than employers
• U.S. pet insurance market to double by 2022: Here are 5 reasons why

Dennis Healy is a member of the ARAG® executive team. Dennis is a passionate advocate for legal insurance and has more than 25 years of insurance industry experience, with a primary focus on the sale of group voluntary benefit products to employer groups of all sizes through brokers, consultants and employee benefit exchanges.