How Do Your Employee Benefits Stack Up?
Monday, August 12th, 2013
Are you worried about retaining your key employees as the economy heats up? Or do you need to attract new workers to help with growing demand for your product or service, or to expand your business? In either case, employee benefits are an important factor in whether employees choose to join your company, stay with your business for the long haul or jump ship.
How do you know if your employee benefits measure up?
SHRM’s 2013 Employee Benefits research report can offer some insights. While the majority of companies responding to the survey had over 100 employees, some 22 percent were small businesses. Below is a look at the basic benefits most companies were offering, plus some “extras” that could give you an edge.
So How Do Your Employee Benefits Compare?
Health and Wellness
The basics: Health insurance is an important benefit for employees, and it’s offered by almost every business. The most common health benefit was prescription drug coverage, offered by 98 percent of companies. Ninety-six percent provide dental insurance, and 86 percent offer PPO healthcare coverage, while 33 percent provide an HMO plan.
Pump it up: Preventive or wellness programs have been on the rise over the last five years, SHRM notes. These offerings, which can help cut health-care costs, can range from bonuses or incentives for reaching health goals (such as quitting smoking) to wellness coaching or subsidized gym membership. About two-thirds of companies offer some type of wellness program.
Retirement Savings and Planning
The basics: Retirement is another big issue on employees’ minds as they struggle to recover from the recession. Employer-sponsored retirement plans are shifting toward defined contribution retirement savings plans and 401(k) savings plans. Nearly all (92 percent) of employers offer a defined-contribution retirement savings plan, and 73 percent provide an employer match to employees’ contributions.
Pump it up: More companies are offering investment assistance, from online advice (59 percent) to one-on-one investment advice (53 percent) and specific retirement-preparation advice.
Financial and Compensation Benefits
The basics: Incentive bonus plans are offered by 55 percent of companies
Pump it up: Employee referral bonuses, for referring a job candidate who is hired and passes the probationary period, have gained in popularity over the last year and are now offered by 47 percent of companies.
Flexible Work
The basics: The majority (53 percent) of companies offer some form of flextime. Fifty-one percent allow flextime during core business hours, while 26 percent offer it outside of core business hours. Even more popular is telecommuting, which 58 percent of companies offer in some form, whether ad-hoc (45 percent), part-time (36 percent) or full-time (20 percent)
Pump it up: Over one-third (35 percent) of companies offer compressed workweeks, where full-time employees can work longer days for part of a week or pay period in exchange for shorter days or a day off during that week or pay period.
Career Development
The basics: Nearly all (90 percent) companies provide professional memberships, 85 percent provide off-site professional development opportunities and 78 percent pay for certification fees.
Pump it up: Just 44 percent of companies offer cross-training in skills not directly related to the job, and a mere 20 percent offer mentorship.
Three Steps to Get the Most From Them:
Whatever employee benefits you offer, SHRM’s report recommends three steps to getting the most from them as a recruitment and retention tool:
Develop a Workplace Flexibility Policy
Past SHRM research shows flexibility is a very low-cost way to drive increased employee job satisfaction, lower turnover and lower insurance costs.
Communicate
SHRM studies show employees consistently rank benefits among the top contributors to their job satisfaction, but many employees don’t fully understand all of their benefits, their value and their options.
Make sure you communicate, through meetings, workshops and other means, about the worth of what you’re giving employees and how they can maximize their benefits’ value. Toot your own horn.
Get Feedback
Review your benefits at least once a year to make sure they’re still competitive with other businesses, that their costs are in line, and—most of all—that they’re serving employees’ needs.
Getting employee feedback is an important part of this assessment.
Courtesy: Small Biz Trends
