Employers offer pet health care as perk

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By Tim Devaney THE WASHINGTON TIMES

Even as the human health care debate rages in Congress, businesses are showing support for the animal kingdom by providing heath insurance for their employees' four-legged friends.

Hundreds of companies including Google Inc. and Blockbuster Inc. offer pet health insurance as a supplementary benefit to attract and retain employees, said David Lummis, a senior pet market analyst for Packaged Facts, a market research firm.

An "overwhelming wave" of interest has seen the size of the pet insurance industry more than double since 2002, Mr. Lummis said. More than 1 million pet owners across the country are spending about $400 a year to insure their pets.

It's a smart positioning strategy for companies that want to compete for top employees, Mr. Lummis said.

"Good companies listen to their people and adapt to them," said John Challenger, chief executive of Challenger, Gray & Christmas, a human resources consulting firm in Chicago.

Many companies are afraid their best employees will leave when the economy recovers, but offering competitive benefit packages is one way to retain them, he said.

In fact, pet insurance is one of the three most requested voluntary employee benefits, according to a 2007 survey by Vsurance of Canton, Ohio.

Companies can help employees purchase the insurance at discounted rates by offering it as a voluntary benefit, which can generate "tremendous good will," Mr. Lummis said.

Concerto Networks is one of those companies. The D.C. company, which provides information technology support to small businesses, makes an effort to appeal to "pet-loving employees" by offering pet insurance to its small staff and allowing them to bring their pets to work, owner John Videna said.

Other companies are slowly catching on. Just 3 percent of U.S. companies offer pet insurance as a benefit, according to a 2009 survey by the Society for Human Resource Management.