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Boss School by Jay Goltz
Jay Goltz, who has never held a full-time job but now employs more than a 100 people as CEO and founder of the Goltz Group, writes about the tough calls that bosses have to make, the conundrums no one has ever warned them about. Until now.
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December 27, 2007
When Do You Stop Paying a Disabled Employee?
Posted at 11:23 AM
Most successful small business owners have some key, valued employees in what they consider their "business family" -- people they'd have a hard time replacing. Here's my question: What if one of these key people gets sick and misses work for months or even a year? How long will you go on paying them? At what point will you stop paying them? No one likes to think about this, but there has to be a point, doesn't there?
Personally, I don't want to have to make that choice. I feel it is critical to have disability insurance for these people (both for their sake and for mine). Everyone who is salaried at my company has a disability policy. After 30 days, it kicks in automatically. They know it. I know it. There are no decisions to be made. The premium for 20 people runs all of about $5,000 per year. It's a good benefit for them, of course, but it's also good for me. It's less exposure for grief. It means I'm much less likely to have to make a very painful decision. And yet, through the years, I've been surprised to learn that most business owners don't carry this kind of coverage. Do you have disability insurance for your key employees?
Jay Goltz is the author of The Street Smart Entrepreneur. You can buy his book here.
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We were about to cut this guy in for 5% of the business when he had a heart attack (age 50). He's been off 3 months now and we've continued to pay him, but it's got to end. I need to hire someone soon to pick up the slack... As the owner, I can't do his job and continue to do mine. How do I approach this?
This is a common but not talked about problem in business. Since this particular post was meant to be about disability insurance, I am going to post a new entry covering your situation. Please follow me there so we can have some productive dialog as well as get a pulse on how other businesspeople have or would handle this. Please note, the "blog" software has a bug they are trying to fix. If you do post something, IGNORE the message that it did not go through. It did!
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