5 Tips for Designing Competitive Employee Benefit Packages

A new trend is growing among human resource professionals: providing competitive benefit packages to attract more employees.

In a recent reward risk survey in the United Kingdom, majority of recruitment professionals surveyed said that the provision of relevant benefit packages is now their top priority, even surpassing the concern for techniques on employee recruitment and retention.

According to the recruiters asked in the poll, more and more HR companies are worrying that employees don’t fully understand the real value of benefit packages offered by their individual companies. Such lack of understanding posts risks for employers, as it could lead to higher employee attrition rates and unsatisfactory assessments on their company’s workforce enhancement programmes. Companies unable to provide relevant benefit packages also find it hard to implement strategies for recruitment and retention, as potential employees nowadays easily get discouraged when they hear nasty rumours about bad benefit packages in their prospective company.

So how do you design competitive benefits packages that would ensure employee satisfaction? Here’s how:

1. Beat the competition – With many companies competing for the limited competent workforce available, it is important that you ensure your company offers benefit packages that are at par, if not better, with that offered by rival companies. To do so, you should be aware of what other companies are offering, and you should be willing to surpass the said offers.
2. Be relevant – Know what your employees really need and ensure that these needs are provided. The secret to better employee recruitment and retention stats is offering what the most pressing demand of the populace is. Listen to your employees and provide incentives that matter. Rewards that are only tangential to the needs of employees are as good as nothing. For example, a generally fit and healthy but cash-strapped workforce needs more cash incentives than sick leave benefits.
3. Offer small rewards – Be it big or small, in the world of professional reward structuring, every single perk counts. Offer free dry-cleaning on Fridays, or throw in occasional free lunches and tickets to certain concerts. These things may seem trivial, but employees appreciate them, and this could really boost employee satisfaction, recruitment, and retention.
4. Give out irresistible financial rewards – With the current economic situation, more and more employees are concerned with financial security. Reward employees that meet performance goals by offering substantial salary increases, stock options, and other financial rewards. Do the math: How much are you willing to dish out to ensure employee satisfaction? You’d be surprised that it’s relatively easy to strike that delicate balance wherein you can give out raises while still keeping the business afloat.
5. Hire a third party company – If you have a relatively large workforce, it is a daunting task to keep track of each of your employee’s needs. Putting someone with a high level of expertise on providing rewards could help you focus on other matters concerning the company and ensures that your business offers the best and the latest when it comes to benefit packages for employees.

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