Related question: Can the employer contribute different amounts for different classes of employees?
No. In fully-insured small group plans, you can’t class out employees. You have to offer the same plans to everyone and use the same contribution methodology. If the company pays 50% of the premium for hourly employees, for instance, it cannot contribute 100% of the premium for managers or for owners.
The company might be able to vary contribution more based on tenure. For instance, 50% for 0-2 years of employment, 100% after 2 years. That might in effect allow the group to pay more for managers if they’ve been there. longer. I’ve never been able to find anything in writing saying you can’t do this, and the only thing I’ve found saying you can is an old Humana document that had one sentence about it. But if an employer contributes this way and it ends up benefitting higher compensated workers more than lower compensated, they should NOT do a 125 plan since it would likely fail discrimination testing. Instead, any employee payroll deductions should be after tax.
Interestingly, a small employer could potentially offer different coverage to different classes of employees by offering group coverage to one class and an ICHRA (Individual Coverage Health Reimbursement Arrangement) to another class. There are rules about acceptable classes of employees and about the minimum number of participants in each class, and it’s possible that a small group carrier would push back on offering group coverage to some but not all full-time employees within a group.