In surveys of employment satisfaction and loyalty, feeling valued by your employer and achieving a work-life balance are almost uniformly at the top of the list. The good news? There is one thing that you can tinker with to boost your scores on both metrics: The types of benefits that you offer.
For example, in a recent survey by Met Life, 73% of employees said that they believed their company had a responsibility for their health and well-being and 60% said that having access to benefits that support this notion make them feel valued and appreciated and thus breed loyalty. Specifically, 53% of workers said they’d be more loyal to a company that offers a robust benefits package and 52% indicated that expanded offerings would make them more successful in both their work and personal lives. In fact, the benefits that you offer are so important, that nearly a third of the employee’s surveyed reported that they’d be “willing to trade a higher salary for better benefits.”
The good news is that employers are on the same page, with 82% recognizing the role that benefits play in their worker’s happiness. Further, a second survey from the Society of Human Resource Management (SHRM) finds that in the past year, nearly three-quarters of employers have increased their benefits offerings to retain talent.
But what types of benefits are most valuable to workers? According to Met Life, the benefits deemed most important to workers both “play a central role in helping them achieve their personal and work-related goals, and address their main stressors, particularly around personal finances, retirement, and their family’s health.” As is almost always the case, health, dental and 401(k) assistance top the list of must haves, but other forms or insurance including life insurance, disability, accident insurance and even critical illness coverage also topped the list. Concerns about financial security also caused perks such as student loan assistance and financial wellness programming to rank as being of value to workers.
But beyond these more traditional benefits, there is a world of other perks that employees often value just as much for the contribution that they make to their work-life balance. Many employees and especially your younger generations relish the opportunity to have a flexible schedule or to be able to complete some of their work hours from home. The availability of technology, such as VPNs (virtual private networks) exist so workers can access office-based materials and even video conference calls making granting these requests easier than ever. In that same vein of helping to achieve better work-life balance, other employees might gravitate towards a concierge perk, whereby they can sign up to have someone run errands, such as picking up/dropping off the dry cleaning or grocery delivery. And still others don’t ascribe to the idea that there’s no such thing as a free lunch and would welcome the idea of cafeteria perks or even just a weekly catered lunch. Really, what these employees are looking for someone to lighten the load.
Another opportunity to incorporate perks lies in making improvements to the environment in which your employees work. Taking steps to improve the quality of lighting in the office, reaching a truce in the temperature wars so more people are comfortable, or simply allowing employees to listen to music while they work can all go a long way to improving employee’s perception of their time at work. A second idea that is also appreciated by staff is taking steps to make their workspace more comfortable and efficient. Standing desks, alternative office chairs, or even glare-reducing filters for computer screens can all help to reduce fatigue and may even have the added benefit of boosting on-the-job performance. As you can tell from this overview, there are many ways that you can manipulate your benefits offerings to best appeal to your workforce, but there truly is no one-size-fits-all approach. With this in mind, you’ll need to actually take the time to survey your employees and future candidates about what benefits they would be most excited to see, then draft a plan to see whether this is a request that you can accommodate.
If it’s “material” benefits that you’re seeking, such as pet insurance or discount entertainment tickets, you might need to look outside the box or rather, outside of your company. By partnering with a PEO such as Abel HR, we count you in our client pool and use this collective clout to negotiate the best, most comprehensive benefits packages at a rate that you wouldn’t be able to obtain on the open market as a small business owner. In doing so, you can offer the kind of perks usually reserved for employees at larger companies, all at a price that more closely matches a small business budget.
Want to learn more about our benefits offerings? Give us a call today at 800-400-1968.
