Before signing a contract, prospective employees usually take a look at the employee benefits program a company can offer. As one of the largest expenses a business owner will likely shoulder, how you strategize your offers should align with how many people you employ, and your overall budget. Take a look at these tips for creating an ideal employee benefits program.
What Should an Employee Benefits Program Include?
Your Employee Benefits Program needs to be centered around your primary goals. While they should be competitive, they also need to be financially realistic. If you’re offering both required and optional benefits, be sure you’re able to clearly differentiate from both. If you have room, consider additional perks that draw your prospects in. To get started on crafting your benefits program, follow these steps.
1. Align your goals and budget
Being generous with your benefits can be attractive to prospective employees, but you’ll need to know why you’re offering certain perks to them in the first place. Perhaps you want to attract and retain high-quality employees by standing out within your labor market. Or maybe you’re just looking to comply with the appropriate federal and state laws, which is perfectly reasonable.
Whatever the case, make sure you’re working within your means. Though big company benefits might seem daunting to a smaller business, you won’t always have to compete if you can offer an excellent Employee Benefits Program.
2. Know what the required state benefits are
The very basis of your benefits must include social security procedures, unemployment and disability insurance, a fair worker’s compensation, and leaves of absence. If you’re already complying with state laws, perhaps you can afford to give your potential employers a few extra perks to entice them.
3. Consider optional benefits
Some optional benefits can be incorporated into your Employee Benefits Program in order to best support your employees. These might include:
- Health insurance: joining a professional employer organization (PEO) is a cost-effective method of qualifying for a PEO-sponsored health plan to help your employees beat the rising costs of healthcare.
- Life insurance: typically affordable for most businesses, life insurance allows an employee to offer indirect support to their families.
- Disability insurance: if an employee is unable to work due to illness or an accident, disability insurance can help keep them afloat while they’re out of the office.
- Retirement savings: offering a 401(k) is an excellent way for your company to stay competitive and encourage your workers to be more financially responsible for contributing money to their own retirement. Be sure to shop for rates that your company can afford.
- Paid time off (PTO): because most employees will expect paid time off for national holidays or planned vacations anyway, you’re better off getting ahead of the game and offering it in their benefits package.
4. Highlight perks
If you can’t enumerate certain perks in a job listing, you can disclose them to a candidate during an interview. These perks might include flexible working hours, telecommuting, or collaborations, and career growth. These benefits can create a more satisfying environment for your employees to work in.
5. Illustrate your employees’ total compensation
To give your employees the full picture, provide them with an annual statement of their total compensation. Translate their wages and benefits into a dollar amount that is more tangible to them. You can include in your report how an employee’s total compensation reflects much higher than their annual wages alone.
Conclusion
Signing up with a PTO can help attract the best of the best to your business. At Semel Risk Consultants, we can help incorporate full-coverage employee benefits into your compensation packages.
