Last updated: September 2026
Every fall, Georgia business owners open the same spreadsheet and ask the same question. Is this year’s benefits package good enough to keep people? According to SHRM’s 2026 Employee Benefits Survey, 88% of employers now rate health-related benefits as “very” or “extremely” important to their overall strategy, the highest share in years. Employees are asking the same question from the other side of the table, and the gap between what employers offer and what employees understand is where most open enrollment problems start.
For a business with 15 or 50 employees, that gap gets expensive fast. A missed FSA deadline, a plan employees don’t understand, or a benefit that goes unused because nobody explained it clearly all show up later as turnover, frustration, or a costly HR fire drill.
2026 brought real changes to the numbers employees see on their enrollment screen. The IRS raised the health FSA contribution limit to $3,400 for plan years beginning in 2026, along with a $4,400 HSA limit for individual coverage and $8,750 for family coverage. These are modest increases, but they change the math for employees deciding how much to set aside, and outdated numbers in open enrollment materials create confusion at exactly the moment employees need clarity.
At the same time, this comes as premiums keep climbing for the coverage employees are choosing between. KFF’s 2025 Employer Health Benefits Survey found family premiums reached an average of $26,993 a year, a 6% increase, with employers absorbing most of that cost while still asking employees to make good decisions with the plan choices in front of them. Add SHRM’s finding that paid parental leave jumped to 46% of employers this year, up seven percentage points from 2025, while prescription drug coverage bundled into standard health plans fell from 93% to 77%, and Georgia employers are navigating a benefits landscape that looks different than it did even two years ago.
Health Coverage Still Decides Whether Employees Engage
SHRM’s 2026 survey found 88% of employers rate health benefits as very or extremely important, more than any other category. Employees decide within the first few minutes of opening an enrollment portal whether they trust the plan lineup, and health coverage is what they check first. If plan comparison tools are confusing or rate sheets are hard to read, most employees stop paying attention right there and default to whatever they had last year, whether or not it’s still the right fit.
What to check: Are your plan summaries written for someone outside HR to understand? Can an employee compare deductibles and premiums side by side without opening three different documents?
Retirement and Leave Are Catching Up Fast
Retirement and leave benefits aren’t far behind health coverage in importance, with 82% of employers rating each as very or extremely important. But access to these benefits still splits sharply by company size. BLS data shows 59% of workers at businesses with fewer than 100 employees have access to retirement benefits, compared to 90% at businesses with 500 or more employees. If your business sits in that smaller bracket, closing the gap matters more for retention than most owners assume, since it’s one of the first things a candidate compares between job offers.
The Contribution Limits Employees Need to Know
For 2026, the IRS set the health FSA limit at $3,400, up from $3,300, along with a $680 carryover cap. HSA limits rose to $4,400 for individual coverage and $8,750 for family coverage. None of these numbers help an employee unless they’re communicated before the enrollment window opens, not buried in a benefits guide nobody reads. A short reminder email with the current year’s numbers, sent a week before enrollment starts, prevents most of the “how much should I contribute” confusion that HR fields every fall.
Communication Beats Plan Design More Often Than Owners Expect
It’s tempting to assume a better benefits package is the fix. Often, the real problem is communication. Employees who don’t understand what they’re choosing between tend to default to their prior selections, miss deadlines, or under-use benefits they’re already paying for. NAPEO’s 2025 Annual Tracking Survey found that 87% of non-PEO small businesses say they’re interested in outside benefits help in the future, a sign that most owners already sense the communication gap even before they know what to do about it. A short, plain-language explanation of what changed this year, delivered early and more than once, does more to improve the employee experience than most plan upgrades.
Questions to Ask Before Your Next Enrollment Window Opens
- How does our benefits package compare to businesses our size, not the market average?
- Are our plan summaries written in language an employee outside HR can actually follow?
- Do our FSA and HSA communications reflect this year’s IRS limits, or last year’s?
- What share of our employees actively review their options versus letting coverage roll over automatically?
This is exactly where a PEO changes the equation for small and mid-size Georgia businesses. When you join a larger benefits pool through OneSource, your employees gain access to plan designs and pricing that used to require hundreds of employees to negotiate, backed by a dedicated specialist who handles the plan comparisons, the compliance paperwork, and the employee communication that makes enrollment actually work. If your renewal is coming up and you want a clear picture of where your business stands, reach out to or onesourcepeo.com.
onesourcepeo.com | service@onesourcepeo.com | (678) 990-8630