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As a business professional, you might often ask yourself “what can we do to increase employee retention”? While there are several different ways you can go about it, one of the most successful things you can do is take a look at the benefits you offer your employees and update them.
Simply ask your most tenured employees which benefits they love and which benefits they wish were offered. You can gather a lot of useful information through an anonymous survey and it will likely be the best way to get authentic feedback. Another helpful strategy is to compare your benefit structure with what your competitors offer. This may be a reason your retention is lower than you’d like.
Let's explore what your next steps should be and take a look at some of the most popular benefits companies will offer their employees and why these will likely boost your retention rate.
Start by educating your employees as to what their current benefits are. A survey from Voya Financial claims that over one-third of employees do not understand the benefits they’re enrolled in. This is concerning for any business because this means you are not doing your job to offer clear, easy-to-understand benefits that your employees value.
The human resources (HR) department is responsible for taking on this task and ensuring there is clarity around current and new benefit structures. HR is also responsible for informing everyone at the company about what and when open enrollment is - start with the basics, such as by answering “how does open enrollment work” to gauge your employees’ knowledge base and go from there. Since the answer is this is the timeframe when employees can apply for benefits, doing this education ahead of your open enrollment period is the perfect opportunity to educate everyone about what their benefit options are and how to use them.
As mentioned before, benefits are a part of your employee's “pay” and should be treated as such. Take a moment to consider these popular benefits that may contribute to boosting retention rates.
There are several types of insurance, but the most important ones that should be offered include medical, dental, and vision. Some added coverage you can also provide your employees with are life insurance and disability insurance. Adding on these extra coverage plans can make a huge difference to employees and will allow your company to stick out against your competitors.
This is one of the benefits that can fluctuate the most company-to-company. Depending on your industry you may be limited to what you can offer here, but be sure to take into consideration the personal life of your employees and how you can support a healthy work-life balance. The most important thing is that you verify employees have enough vacation time to support their well-being.
The two most popular types of PTO structures include unlimited PTO and PTO which is offered based on tenure. Either has its positives and negatives, but ensuring there is a good structure of tracking and allocating PTO is the most important. Invest in a time-off tracking software to help keep track of all your employees and ensure PTO is being used, but not abused.
Flexible work can mean so many different things. This is also another benefit that will depend on the type of work you do, as that will directly sway if and how it’s offered. First and foremost, offering employees the ability to work remotely is number one. This can look several different ways, but some types of remote work can be very appealing to employees and can ultimately weigh heavily in their decision-making when applying for jobs.
It can also mean allowing employees to work flexible hours. While this isn’t always possible it can be super beneficial to them to be able to work around their schedule, especially for those who have children or live busy lives. This is a benefit that is essentially free for you to offer but can be the deciding factor for your employees on whether or not they can work for you.
Supporting your worker's mental health is just as important as supporting their physical health. This can be done by offering mental health days or just simply ensuring your health insurance covers mental health services. Recently, this has been something more and more employees are requiring from their employers and is another way your company can stand out. Not only this but supporting your employees' mental health shows you truly care and can make a huge difference in the quality of work they produce.
Though retirement savings may not be at the forefront of everyone's mind, it is one of the most financially responsible ways to prepare for the future. As an employer, offering some sort of retirement planning such as a 401k or Roth IRA, and matching contributions is a simple, yet impactful way to invest in your employees. This is something many employees look at when applying to jobs and can be a great strategy to use through recruiting. Ultimately investing in your employee’s future shows them that you care about them and will go a long way.
While offering your employees tangible benefits is a great starting point in increasing your retention, there are several other non-tangible things that will keep your employees around longer and can even attract new ones.
Employee engagement and workplace culture are two areas that have a heavy weight in the day-to-day operations of your business. Not only will this create a fun atmosphere for you and your employees, but it will also be a great thing to highlight and can directly contribute to the success of your business. Check out these best practices to improve employee engagement and you’ll be well on your way to creating the ideal workplace.
“Our staff has praised the increased communications level Workmates delivers. We use it to communicate important project matters and give staff specific ‘kudos’ or even recognize their birthdays. More importantly, we use Workmates to clarify important project details that needed rapid dissemination among the entire team.”
Once you’ve done an internal review of your benefits and made some changes for the better of your company, you can now turn and use these to help grow your business. Recruiting and hiring are two areas that will directly have an impact on your retention rates. Ensuring best practices are followed in these areas will allow you to bring on the best employees that align not only with your business values but also have the eagerness and desire to be successful alongside you.
Some various ways you can adjust the method you currently hire is through your recruitment process. Take a look at ways you can take advantage of recruitment strategies to be successful in the hiring process. This is where you will make the biggest impact on the future of your company and placing high emphasis on hiring the right people will directly improve your company's turnover.
With that said, the first step is to ensure you are providing your employees with the benefits they need but also providing them with things that not every other company does. This is the best way to make your company stand out from competitors and is the best way to gain top talent and retain it.
Next steps: Begin research on other factors that influence employee retention and start working to improve those!
Author Bio:
This article is written by a marketing team member at HR Cloud. HR Cloud is a leading provider of proven HR solutions, including recruiting, onboarding, employee communications & engagement, and rewards & recognition. Our user-friendly software increases employee productivity, delivers time and cost savings, and minimizes compliance risk.