Many of our clients ask us how they can better serve their employees to help keep them happy at their companies – and the area where we can add value is by curating a well-rounded benefits package. You have worked hard in Talent Acquisition to find the best of the best employees who are a good fit for your industry, so let us help you keep that good talent around!! Now, this doesn’t mean choosing every benefit perk under the sun to offer your employees – that could cause undue cost incurrence to the company if the benefit is not something that will be utilized or valued by your staff.
Customize Benefits to What Your Talent Wants
The great advantage you have as an employer is you get to build your own benefit package. You can add and remove benefits as needed once you learn and gauge what would be beneficial for your employees. Before you decide which perks to include, you should conduct an employee benefits survey within your team to have a better grasp of their satisfaction with the company’s current offerings. This will provide a baseline and give you more insight into their likes and dislikes so you can critically analyze what benefits are being utilized or what is lacking.
We have put together ideas to improve employee retention and showcase how perks and add-on programs can help meet your employees' wants and needs. So, here are some tips for those of you in the Talent Acquisition departments of your companies.
It is first helpful to understand your company’s goals and needs when searching for an employee who is a perfect fit. But you also want to be a perfect fit for your new hires. Remember, while they are useful to you as a company, there are also ways for you as an employer to be useful to your employees. Our HR partners at Mineral remind us that “the more useful you can be, the more inclined employees will be to stay with you.”
Knowing your employees well will help you tailor a benefit package that specifically suits their needs. Not all employers offer the same benefit packages. So, when working with your insurance broker or benefits advisor, it is important that you also discuss the wants and needs of your employees to make sure your benefit offerings go above and beyond other employers while considering what perks are meaningful to them.
Increase Value to Benefits
- One of the most common ways this can be done is by increasing your company's contribution toward the premium cost of health benefits – like on medical, dental, or vision policies.
- Other companies will offer to pay for the Short-Term and Long-Term Disability benefits for all full-time employees. This helps employees feel comforted knowing if they are out of work on a disability claim, they will still have financial assistance coming in to cover expenses while they are not actively working.
- Some employers choose to offer pre-tax financial savings platforms to their employees by giving them the option to contribute to Health Savings Account (HSA), Flexible Spending Accounts (FSA), or Retirement plan (401k). Most employers often match or contribute a percentage themselves to these individual bank accounts for the employee to have pre-tax funds saved for healthcare needs or retirement savings.
- You can also think outside the box and consider offering perks programs that include $0 access points to health providers for mental health visits or $0 primary care options through a Direct Primary Care (DPC) platform.
- Pharmacy discount programs are another great way to incorporate savings for employees who may not be on the medical plan, or they may be enrolled in a high deductible health plan and haven’t come close to meeting their deductible at the time of their needing a simple prescription for a sinus infection.
- We partner with Benefithub to offer non-health-related perks for some of our groups. This includes discounted tickets for travel, theme parks, membership clubs, sporting events, restaurants, etc.
- One of our employers values fitness programs and meal reimbursement for their employees. So, they offer financial incentives for them to get a monthly gym membership reimbursement or a monthly meal stipend if needed, especially if their job involves a lot of travel.
As you can see, there are many options out there to develop a customized benefit plan that is specifically catered to your employees' wants and needs. It is important to assess these desires so you can ensure you are offering meaningful and worthwhile benefits to your team, which in turn, should help contribute to their happiness and loyalty to your company.
Conduct Stay Interviews
Another suggestion from our Mineral HR partners is to conduct “stay interviews.” This is a great way to find out what employees like or dislike about the company while improving trust and reassurance that their concerns will be acknowledged and addressed. It is important to make clear that these types of interviews will in no way impact their performance reviews or result in any form of retaliation. They are merely for the talent acquisition department to learn more about how to make improvements for their organization. Here are a few questions to consider asking:
- What can we do to better support you?
- What motivates you or what would you like to learn more about here?
- What do you look forward to most when you come to work each day?
- What might tempt you to leave?
- What is one thing you would change about your job?
- What do you like most or least about working here?
Follow-up to these interviews is key – be sure to let the employees know what changes will be made, if any, based on their feedback. Let them know you appreciate them sharing their concerns or ideas and you will share the feedback with the decision makers.
You know your employees best. With their help, you can learn better ways to address their needs to help them feel satisfied and content in their job roles. This can be done by tailoring a benefits package and creating a work environment that is conducive to their happiness and success. Company morale will increase as the employees feel appreciated and valued, which in turn, will help your company grow and do better overall – who doesn’t want that?!
