As an employer, do you ever consider enhancing your employee benefits offering?
Naturally, your aim is to attract and retain your best members of staff. However, a pension scheme and a competitive salary are no longer enough to give you an edge against other employers. They also don’t guarantee that your employees will stay committed to your business long-term.
Employee benefits are now an expected part of working lives. According to a report by Glassdoor, 60% of people say that benefits and perks are one of their top considerations when deciding whether to accept a job offer. Likewise, 70% of employees said that benefits customised to their needs would increase their loyalty to their places of work, a survey by MetLife found.
A great benefits package shows your employees that you care, have their best interests in mind and value their job performance. Employers should consider expanding their employee benefits offering to make their overall package more attractive to current employees and potential new recruits. Below, we look at how investing in your employees is investing in the future of your business.
Attracting Highly Skilled Employees
A changing UK economy has resulted in more jobs becoming available. This is great news for job seekers as it means they can be more selective about where they work. As an employer, you face the challenge of standing out to attract skilled and dedicated employees to build a strong foundation for your business.
When deciding whether to join a company, benefits are a key factor for new recruits. Offering an attractive benefits plan will set you apart from your competitors and help you attract the most talented individuals within your industry. Benefits could even be the deciding factor for potential candidates. For example, if you provide a childcare scheme, someone with a family would be more inclined to choose you over another company.
From the outside, providing employee benefits shows that your business is stable and a great place to work as it demonstrates that you believe in your company enough to invest in your employees. Shouting about the benefits available will create good PR and get people talking about your business, which is also useful for attracting new recruits.
Improving Staff Retention
It’s one thing to get great employees on board but keeping them is another. Recent research has found that 79% of employees who quit their jobs cite a lack of appreciation as a key reason for leaving. In a recent study by Deloitte, it was reported that 49% of millennials would quit their current job in the next two years if given the choice.
Retaining employees should be a focus for you as it has many benefits for your business, including:
- It’s easier to build a strong, long-lasting team that will contribute to business growth when employees are loyal. It’s difficult to make progress when staff come and go.
- From advertising a job opportunity to training, recruiting a new employee could cost you much more than the salary of the employee who has left your company.
- Employee turnover causes internal disruption, such as remaining employees taking on extra work and management turning their attention towards finding replacements.
- When an employee leaves, you could potentially be losing a lot of expertise which can cause quality standards and continuity to drop for your customers.
Millennials, who are projected to make up 75% of the workforce by 2025, think differently about work and put more value on how a company treats its employees over salary. Not to mention, benefits can become an essential part of an employee’s life and some even come to rely on them. Enhancing your employee benefits offering will help safeguard the loyalty of your key employees and minimise the risk of them moving on to another company.
Don’t Have a Budget for Improving Your Employee Benefits? There Is a Solution
Providing a good selection of benefits that are attractive and relevant to your employees should be a fundamental consideration for your business. The solution doesn’t have to be expensive and the return could be well in excess of your initial investment. Nia Rogers, our Head of Employee Benefits explains how:
“Many of the popular benefit choices are like going into a supermarket, buying one product and getting at least one other free. There are certain product providers that offer superb ancillary benefits in addition to the product itself. For example, you could purchase an Income Protection Scheme for your employees and receive an Employee Assistance Program and employee discounts free.”
“For most employees, Salary Exchange (Sacrifice) can be offered on your pension contributions as a method of freeing up some budget which could be used towards enhancing your benefits offering. Implementing this doesn’t have to be complicated. With the right support and guidance, setting up is straightforward.”
“Whilst I recommend that you give at least some of your Employers National Insurance savings back to the employee (or all of it, if you have the budget to enhance your benefits), keeping just half of the savings can contribute towards your benefits budget.”
Need Further Advice?
If you would like to explore the options available and potentially free up some budget to put towards improving your employee benefits, we can help you. For a no-obligation conversation about implementing employee benefits or enhancing your current offering, please contact us today on 02920 858611 or email nia.rogers@thomas-carroll.co.uk.
