Let’s get one thing straight: Employees like and appreciate benefits; 92% say benefits are important to job satisfaction. The Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) reports benefits reduce employee turnover. But that’s only if you offer the right benefits at the right time to add value to candidates and existing employees.
We know three in five candidates say perks and benefits are a top reason for accepting a job. What benefits will help you land and retain top talent?
Which Benefits Matter the Most to Employees?
Benefits are complicated now. We don’t mean just the administration of benefits, either. Knowing which benefits to offer depends on the type of employees that make up your business. Today we live in a four-generation workforce, where Baby Boomer’s work elbow to elbow with Generation Z, Millennials, and Gen X. This workforce diversity makes it harder to select the best benefits that offer real value to everyone on the team.
When it comes to benefits, generational differences change what matters. For example, Glassdoor says:
- Baby Boomers value health insurance, salary, and retirement.
- GenX value advancement, 401k plans, job security, and salary.
- Millennials value benefits choices, control over their schedules, the ability to work remotely, and paid time off.
- Gen Y employees value flexible schedules and work/life balance.
While offering benefits by generation not only isn’t feasible, it could violate EEOC (Equal Employment Opportunity Commission) rules which state that you cannot discriminate by age, gender, race—or anything else for that matter. Some companies offer tiered packages based on an employee’s pay grade. That could potentially be legal, but is it the right approach?
How to Design a Better Voluntary Benefits Package
To design a better benefits package that suits today’s multi-generational workforce, employers must collect data on usage patterns. Are you offering benefits that have low usage numbers? Which benefits are most frequently used? Seek out feedback from employees, first, for the benefits they like and, second, to find out which benefits they really want. You should also look around at your competitors. What kind of benefits do they offer?
With this baseline, you can start to design a new package that benefits everyone.
The most common benefits today are:
- Disability insurance.
- Health insurance.
- Life insurance.
- Overtime pay.
- Paid medical leave.
- Paid time off.
Other benefits of great importance include:
- Flexible work hours.
- Skills training
- Student loan forgiveness.
- Tuition reimbursement.
- Working remotely.
SHRM polled their member organizations and found that employers also have clear preferences around which benefits to offer:
- 95% prefer healthcare benefits.
- 71% say retirement benefits.
- One-half like offering leave-related benefits, such as medical leave.
- But around 30% like offering flex time.
- Surprisingly, only 17% of employers like offering professional development benefits. Yet these educational perks end up also benefiting employers, not only by adding skills to your workforce but attracting candidates and retaining employees.
Contact Our Team To Learn More
As you can see, picking the right benefits and then administering them is a complicated process. If you’re wondering where to start, why not consider partnering with FoxHire? We are an Employer of Record (EOR), specializing in full-service management of all of your employee management processes. From onboarding to termination, FoxHire helps companies navigate the tricky waters that come with managing employee benefits and the hiring process. Contact our firm to find out how we can evaluate your current benefits structures—and then take over managing them.
