When you’re picking your benefits package for the upcoming year, it’s likely that your main consideration is bang for your buck. You want to get your workers the best possible array of attractive options at a price that you – and they – can afford. While this line of thinking is certainly smart, you may be missing one key consideration: how can these benefits grow your business.
Consider this: in order to move your business forward, you need to have the best and brightest minds working for you. You need innovative thinkers, leaders in their field, and a handful of folks who can put these thoughts into action, smashing your goals. The bad part? Just about everyone is looking to add these folks to their roster.
To a candidate, the one thing that can set you apart from your competitors – when all other aspects of the job in question are comparable – is the breadth of your benefits plan. In the insurance industry, they refer to this as a “fully-developed” or “comprehensive” benefits plan. The crux of a good plan lies in a package that includes – at a minimum – health insurance and a 401K or other retirement offering. However, additional attractive offerings include dental and vision coverage, health savings or flexible savings accounts, paid time off, disability insurance (both short and long-term) and life insurance, to name a few of the most popular options.
Beyond giving you the pick of the candidate litter, providing strong benefits offerings can help you to retain those workers you spent so much time wooing. This, in turn, decreases turn-over costs – which an analysis by the Center for American Progress suggested ends up costing businesses a whopping 213 percent of the lost employees’ annual salary. Further, those star employees generally contribute to a positive work environment that is more productive and encourage those around them to work even harder so they too can rise to the level of the top performer.
Another key perk often overlooked – but so crucial to attracting and retaining the top talent and thrusting your business forward – is that of the opportunity to upskill your workers. Upskilling refers to the idea of providing additional training opportunities to your existing workforce. Whether you’re teaching them a new skill, how to take on a new role, or simply how to do their existing jobs more effectively, you are saving money by not having to train a new worker from scratch. Educating your employees also helps close the revolving door of disgruntled workers who feel they have stagnated in their role.
Don’t have a giant benefits budget to play with? Don’t let cost stand in your way! You can still work your perks to your advantage. A parent, for example, might be attracted to the option of a flex schedule so that they can handle their child’s pick-up or drop-off, while an ultra-talented millennial might relish the idea of getting to work from home a few times per week. These “benefits” don’t necessarily cost you anything, but they sure do mean a lot to the people who are on your payroll.
So, how can a Professional Employer Organization (PEO) help with all of this? A PEO can draw on its collective purchasing power to obtain benefits that aren’t typically open to the average human resources professional. Further, the scalability of said benefits is infinite – you won’t outgrow them or have to rethink what you’re offering as your business grows and changes. In addition, when it comes to upskilling your workers, a PEO has you covered with programs and resources for you to utilize. From industry or state-mandated training to teaching your HR reps how to develop a competitive compensation plan, a PEO can meet your needs.
The only question left is what are you waiting for?
