This is the time of year when gift-giving usually takes the form of material offerings and, for the lucky few, year-end bonuses. But, considering the continued uncertainty of today's economy and the anticipated increases in cost for health insurance and all types of caregiving programs, brokers are in a good position to help employers rethink the usual coffee mug or pen as a "gift" this year. Employers can instead give their workforce something that could really help them: lifestyle benefits that extend beyond the employee to help them provide care and support to their loved ones.

Your clients know employees are more engaged, more productive, and less likely to call in sick when they have peace of mind about their loved ones, whether that means people or pets. Brokers can help employers level up their employee benefits strategy by adding many types of care to their Lifestyle Spending Account (LSA) program. This way, employers can cost-effectively provide strategic benefits that are more inclusive of their people's needs, regardless of how different those needs are from one employee to the next or what stage of life any employee is in. Here are two key reasons why adding care benefits to an existing LSA program can achieve those outcomes:

• Adding care benefits to an LSA program fills the gaps in traditional benefits plans to meet every employee where they are. Child or dependent care, elder care, and pet care all fall within the embrace of care benefits. No matter who your clients' employees dedicate their love to, LSAs can offer support and assistance.
• In our modern workplaces, five generations of employees require more holistic and inclusive coverage to meet increasingly diverse care needs. LSAs allow employees to choose benefits based on their unique needs and life moments.

What to fund, subsidize, and discount Whether to offer discounts, subsidize, or outright fund employee care benefits depends on an employer's LSA budget and desired outcomes. A good rule of thumb is to encourage them to:

• Fund benefits that will have the most immediate or acute impact on overall employee health and wellbeing.
• Subsidize nice-to-have benefits.
• Offer discounts with partners wherever possible. This way, rather than having too many vendors to manage, employers can streamline their care offerings with a unique and customizable curated list of providers. 

As they define their LSA program's care benefits, employers should consider tailoring their program to employees' unique needs in one of three ways:

• Pay a percentage of their employees' total care costs
• Set a fixed amount to contribute to caregiving for each employee
• Create a sliding scale program, where employees with lower wages get more benefits than those with a higher salary

Employers can set a maximum fund limit in each model to suit your budget and program goals.