Employees are the heart of any great business, and key employees and leaders are essential to long term success. Once you get a great team in place and they’re performing well, it’s a huge blow to lose any of your indispensable employees. Benefits are no longer a perk in today’s business world; they’re an expected part of compensation.
Benefit Strategy
Why Offer Benefits to Your Employees
Here are few good reasons to offer benefits to your employees:
- Attract and retain your best employees – By offering quality benefits you will attract and retain qualified candidates for your business and keep your best employees happy.
- Increase your bottom line – By offering benefits instead of higher wages, you win by having a lower wage base match for state and federal unemployment taxes.
- Boost morale – By offering By offering a benefits package, you show an invested interest in your employees. In short, benefits can help promote good moral by keeping employees happier and healthier, with less turnover for your business.
- Promote employee health and wellness – When employees have access to wellness, preventive care, doctor visits, and telemedicine programs, your overall business environment is healthier. Fewer employees out on sick days – and fewer people coming in to work while ill – equals increased productivity and profitability.
- Beat the competition in the race for talent – By offering an ACA compliant health plan and voluntary benefits, you can beat out almost half of your competitors that do not offer benefits.
- Create loyalty – Health insurance is an emotional offering. It says to your employee, “you are a valued asset to this company, and we care about your health and wellbeing”
Setting up a Strategic Benefits Plan
In today’s hiring market, a benefits package is essential for attracting and retaining top talent. Once you have great employees on board, how do you keep them from jumping ship? Here’s what you need to know on setting up a strategic benefits plan:
- Don’t do too much too soon – Start with the fundamental benefits, many operators start with a management only plan and grow from there. If you’re taking over a store, disruption of payroll, retirement and healthcare benefits may be vital to keeping employees happy and engaged.
- Discuss benefit offerings with other operators. It’s important to then look at what you want to compare to. There isn’t a one size fits all or copycat approach that will necessary work, but there will be some obvious benefit choices based on your business and financial priorities of your employees.
- Set a budget – Determine on what you can afford, not what other Operators are contributing.
- Provide plenty of options – Choice is so important. An inflexible benefits program will be viewed far less positively then one with options. It’s fairly simple, the wider the offering, the increased likelihood you can meet the individual needs of your whole employee base.
- Where to go – Once you know what you want, it’s good to go with a trusted partner to create a health and benefits solution that meets your goals.
The key point in offering benefits is not about cost or extravagance. Instead they demonstrate an employer’s investment in its people.