A great paycheck is often a keystone in retaining employees, so it’s not surprising that many employers offer competitive salaries. However, more and more companies are starting to use benefits as a core employee retention strategy. Should you?
How Important are Benefits to Employees?
The Society for Human Resources found that 33 percent of companies used benefits as a retention strategy for employees at all levels of the business (vs 18% in 2012.) Benefits are becoming more and more important to employees. In a Monster.com survey, 32 percent of job hunters said that health insurance was their top priority, compared with 15 percent who said a higher salary was most important.
What makes a benefits package a valuable employee retention tool? Well, despite the growing importance of benefits to employees, only 49 percent of employees are satisfied with their current benefits. That means the average employer can make benefits better for 51 percent of their employees, resulting in greater retention.
To keep reading, click here: Retaining your employees through great benefits
If the benefits offered are the type the employee will need, salary costs can be less because of the coverage the benefits offer. It is a win-win for both because of the greater satisfaction between employee and employer.
It has to be clear on both sides so that commitment is made, similar to a contract procedures. This way an employer gets the job done at the specifications needed and the employee gets the benefits they want.
And then there are the benefits that don’t even cost anything: flexible hours, work at home when necessary (or when desired – I LOVE my boss), being nice to the people who work for you.
Here’s a Glamour Don’t: When you acquire a company, don’t convert the five personal days that everyone uses as extra vacation days to sick days that you have to be sick to take and that do not roll over and do not get paid out. If you do that, you will find that people get sick a lot.