The Importance of Employee Benefits

Business is about more than dollars and cents; it’s about taking care of people and showing them your company cares. According to Forbes, 96% of all employees believe showing empathy is an easy way to improve retention. 

How can an employer show empathy to its employees? The easiest way is to take their wants and needs seriously with competitive benefits packages.

A 2016 Aflac survey found that 60% of employers believe having a benefits package is extremely important to employee loyalty. When employees see generous benefits, they are more likely to work for you longer and harder. It may seem simple, but in business, it’s often the simplest of matters that get overlooked.

What Can Employee Benefits Provide For Your Business?

Offering your employees great benefits packages helps your business in four key areas.

• Attracting talent
• Fostering loyalty
• Creating a healthy work environment 
• Boosting motivation/engagement/productivity

Attracting Talent

A 2018 MetLife study showed that just 67% of the surveyed employees were happy with their current benefits. That means a third of the workforce is unhappy with their employer’s benefits package.

Think about how many high-level employees you could attract with an extensive benefits program. The more top talent you can recruit, the more your business succeeds.

Fostering Loyal Employees

Loyal employees don’t fall out of the sky; you have to work for them. One of the most effective ways to work for your employees’ loyalty is by providing better benefits.

The same Aflac study referenced in the introduction showed that 36% of the surveyed employees thought improving their benefits package was an excellent way to keep them in their job. 

How does that affect a business’s bottom line? As the creator of the Net-Promoter system Frank Reichheld points out, “companies can’t earn their customers’ loyalty until they earn their employees’ loyalty.”

Frank’s wisdom isn’t hearsay. The Medallia Institute compared employee engagement across 130 retail stores. The companies with more loyal and engaged employees (measured by the likelihood the employee would recommend their place of work) had customer loyalty ratings 12 percent higher than stores with less loyal and committed employees.

On top of those numbers, stores with higher employee engagement increased their customer loyalty year-over-year, while the stores with lower employee engagement saw a consistent drop.

Successful businesses run on loyal employees from the top down. Having dependable benefits creates a robust management structure that understands how to keep talent.

Creating a Healthy Work Environment

Research shows that employees who are satisfied with their work environment are 16% more productive, 18% more likely to stay, and 30% more attracted to their current employers over their competitors.

Keeping your employees healthy can also improve your bottom line. If workers don’t have access to healthcare and can’t take personal days, they are more likely to experience dissatisfaction at work. CulverServices offers a Proactive Health Management Plan (PHMP) that uses preventative health care to improve employees’ wellness while saving you money.

Boosting Motivation, Engagement, and Productivity

Imagine you hire the best talent in your region. You’re excited about the opportunity, and things are going great when your newly hired employee has a death in the family. Suddenly, their performance starts to dwindle, and it hurts your business. What do you do?

The NCBI found that 58% of the Netherlands’ work-related disabilities and 30% of the UK’s sickness absences were due to mental health issues. Having health and wellness programs with mental health components cuts down on work absences, reduces disability expenses, and as a result, increases productivity.

Implementing a wellness program also promotes teamwork and camaraderie. Employees who feel like they a valued part of a team are more motivated in the workplace.

Providing the Right Employee Benefits

Choosing which benefits to provide your employees is difficult given the current generational disparity between workers.

But in the wake of COVID, employers will have to adapt their packages even more than usual. For example, CulverServices, PHMPs keep employees’ healthcare costs down with education and incentives, such as reading an article about fitness or having a phone call with a nurse.

These incentives encourage employees to take better care of their health, reducing premiums and medical costs down the line. PHMP leads to an average 11-17% decrease in overall healthcare spending after years in the program.

Because the program takes advantage of the tax code, it’s free to employers and gives

employees more money each payday. If you’re looking to adapt your health insurance plan to the COVID climate while improving your bottom line, then a proactive health management plan can reduce your costs while improving outcomes.

The other desirable employee benefits program to consider is a Deferred compensation/retention package. These benefits are usually a part of retirement packages.

With deferred compensation packages, the employee defers a portion of their wages and receives it later. Examples of these plans include pensions, retirement funds, and employee stock options.

Offering deferred compensation benefits shows candidates that you take care of your employees after they stop working. Retirement is everyone’s dream. Working for a business that takes care of that dream motivates people.

Benefits Help Both Employee and Employer

Every successful employer has a symbiotic relationship with its employees. Even if a business has the hottest product on the market, if they don’t treat their employees well, they won’t succeed.

Offering enticing employee benefits packages ensures that your company attracts the best talent in the industry. In this way, you can view employee benefits as a marketing tactic.

Don’t fall behind your competition by neglecting employee benefits. At Culver, we help your team to hire and retain talent. Ask about our employee retention services today to build a stronger business moving forward!