A question I get constantly from small business owners across Volusia County: “Can I give my managers a better health plan than my hourly staff?” Or the flip side — “My office team wants a low-deductible plan, but my warehouse crew doesn’t need anything that rich. Do I have to put everyone on the same plan?” The short answer is no, you don’t, and most owners are surprised by just how much flexibility they actually have. Let’s walk through the real options, from the traditional approach to the more creative structures that have become popular over the last few years.
The Traditional Approach: One Carrier, One Plan (or a Small Menu)
Most small group health plans in Florida work the way people assume: the employer picks one carrier — say, Florida Blue or Cigna — and either one plan design or a short list of two or three tiers, and every eligible employee chooses from that same menu. This is simple to administer and it’s the default most brokers set up first, but it does mean a 24-year-old single employee and a 55-year-old employee supporting a family are shopping from the same limited shelf, even though their needs look nothing alike.
Multi-Plan Offerings: A Little More Flexibility
Some carriers let you go a step further within a traditional group plan by offering multiple metal tiers side by side — for example, a Bronze-level HDHP alongside a Gold-level copay plan, both from the same carrier. Employees self-select based on what fits their situation and budget, while you still set one overall contribution strategy. This is a nice middle step for employers who want some choice without adding administrative complexity, and several Florida Blue and Cigna small group products support this kind of tiered structure.
ICHRA: The Most Flexible Option on the Table
If you want real customization, the Individual Coverage HRA, or ICHRA, is the tool built for exactly that. Instead of the employer choosing a group plan, the employer sets a monthly reimbursement allowance, and each employee uses that allowance to shop for and buy their own individual health plan on or off the marketplace. The employer’s role shifts from picking a plan to funding an allowance — and the allowance amount can legally differ by employee class.
How Employee Classes Work Under ICHRA
The ACA rules for ICHRA define a specific list of permitted employee classes employers can use to set different allowance amounts, including full-time employees, part-time employees, seasonal employees, salaried versus hourly employees, employees in a waiting period, and employees grouped by geographic location (such as by rating area or county). An employer can offer a $500 monthly allowance to full-time salaried staff and a $200 monthly allowance to part-time hourly staff, for instance, as long as the distinction is based on one of these legitimate job-related classes and applied consistently — not based on age, health status, or other prohibited factors. That last part matters: you can vary the offer by job classification, but you cannot design it around who’s healthy and who isn’t.
A Practical Florida Example
Picture a landscaping company based near DeLand with five salaried managers in their 40s and 50s and twenty hourly field employees who are mostly in their 20s. Under a traditional one-size-fits-all group plan, the employer ends up paying a blended rate that’s driven up by the managers’ ages, while the younger field crew is stuck with the same plan design whether they want it or not. With an ICHRA, the employer can set a higher monthly allowance for the salaried management class and a lower, still meaningful, allowance for the hourly field class. Each group then shops the individual market — through Florida Blue, Oscar, Ambetter, or others available in their county — for a plan that actually fits their age, family situation, and budget, instead of everyone getting the same blended compromise.
QSEHRA: Simpler, But Less Flexible
If you have fewer than 50 employees and want something simpler than ICHRA, a Qualified Small Employer HRA, or QSEHRA, is worth considering — but it comes with a key restriction: reimbursement amounts must be uniform for all eligible employees, with the only permitted variation based on family size, not job class. QSEHRA is a great starting point for very small employers who don’t need class-based customization, but if your goal is specifically to treat different employee groups differently, ICHRA is the tool, not QSEHRA.
The Rule You Can’t Skip
One thing that trips people up: if you offer an ICHRA to a particular class of employees, you generally cannot also offer a traditional group health plan to that same class. You can mix approaches across different classes — ICHRA for hourly staff and a traditional group plan for salaried staff, for example — but within a single class, employees don’t get to pick between ICHRA money and group coverage. That’s an all-or-nothing decision per class, and it’s a detail that’s easy to get wrong without guidance.
Bottom Line for Florida Employers
- Traditional group plan: simplest to run, least flexible, works fine for smaller, more homogeneous teams.
- Multi-tier group plan: modest flexibility, still one carrier relationship, good middle ground.
- ICHRA: maximum flexibility by employee class, more setup work, best for businesses with genuinely different employee populations — different ages, locations, or employment types.
- QSEHRA: simple and uniform, best for very small employers who don’t need class-based differences.
Designing this correctly — picking the right structure, setting compliant class definitions, and making sure the numbers actually work for your budget — is where a broker who works these cases regularly saves you from expensive mistakes. If you’re a Florida business owner trying to figure out whether ICHRA, QSEHRA, or a traditional group plan fits your team best, get in touch with Choice Health Insurance Brokers and we’ll map out the right structure for your specific workforce.