
How to Budget for Employee Benefits in 2026
Your CFO approved a benefits budget months ago. Payroll is growing, employees are changing coverage tiers, and the renewal quote now looks nothing like the number in the annual plan.
Insights
Guides, briefs and answers for the people running benefits — written by the advisors who do this every day.

Your CFO approved a benefits budget months ago. Payroll is growing, employees are changing coverage tiers, and the renewal quote now looks nothing like the number in the annual plan.

A founder with 35 employees opens an email and finds out that three new-hire I-9s were never completed. Or a benefits administrator discovers that a COBRA election notice went out

A week before open enrollment, an HR generalist at a 75-person company is trying to reconcile three dental renewals, process life-event forms, answer a crowded inbox, update payroll deductions, and

HR compliance is already consuming more than a quarter of the working time of 34% of HR respondents at small and mid-sized businesses, according to UKG's HR function research. That

You hired a new employee in one state, added a remote worker in another, changed payroll software, and introduced an AI recruiting tool, all within the same year. Nothing felt

ACA compliance is less a filing task than a recordkeeping test. The employer mandate became effective on January 1, 2015, first applying to employers with 100 or more full-time equivalent