Going into 2022, business leaders had never faced a more challenging hiring environment. Tech-based recruitment tools and modern communication channels have made the fight for top talent more intense than ever.
In addition, in 2021, nearly four million workers quit their jobs each month on average. This mass exodus — referred to by many as the “Great Resignation,” took place for many different reasons. However, for business leaders, the effect was the same: it left them scrambling to retain talent.
With increasingly competitive markets and sky-high employee expectations, business leaders have had the gauntlet thrown down when it comes to hiring top talent. One of the best tools that remains in the arsenal is offering a perks and benefits for your employees that isn’t just average — it’s exceptional.
How to Assemble a Good Benefits Package
Before picking the perks and benefits for your employees, it’s important to create a strategy. You can’t just pick as many perks as possible or throw as much money as you can at the problem. If you assemble a package with minimal thought and effort, candidates are going to see right through it.
Instead, you want to select perks and benefits that genuinely either help or flatter (or both) an employee. This starts with baseline elements, like healthcare and retirement options. While these are a good start, though, if you want the package to help you with recruitment, they should merely create a baseline to work from.
Once you have your basic items in place, you can consider what additional things you can add to make the package more attractive. As you do this, keep two important things in mind:
- Your employees’ needs: The collective needs of your staff are essential. For instance, don’t offer a special parking space if they’re going to mostly work remotely. Use this thinking with each perk or benefit you consider. Why will it have value for your average employee?
- Your company culture: Up to 79% of candidates won’t accept a good job if the company is seen as unethical or unable to maintain its own standards. This may seem unrelated to your benefits packages, but this couldn’t be further from the truth. For instance, a benefit like good healthcare can help reinforce a commitment to employee wellbeing. Your benefits should help to actively reinforce a positive, honest, and transparent company culture.
Perks and benefits can simply be part of a compensation package. However, if you want them to help you attract sought-after talent, you need to put a strategy in place before you start selecting individual items.
5 Common Perks and Benefits
Now that we have got a solid idea of how to create a perks and benefits package, here are several of the most common options that employers are including for their employees.
Remember, this isn’t a list of requirements. On the contrary, consider each option, what you can afford, what your employees need, and how each one fits with your company culture. Then pick the ones that make the most sense for your situation.
1. Health Insurance
Health insurance is a baseline benefit. However, when building an attractive compensation package, it’s important to opt for comprehensive healthcare benefits.
This should consider all of an employee’s health-related needs, including things like vision and dental. Fortunately, there is an increasing number of cutting-edge options making these services easier to offer.
2. Retirement Savings
Saving for retirement is another cornerstone benefits option. Once again, simply offering a 401(k) plan isn’t enough here.
Matching contributions is key. In addition, there are many retirement tools available that can give your employees a greater degree of control over managing their savings as they watch them grow.
3. Family Leave
The ability to prioritize family is another critical work perk. From sick leave to maternity and paternity leave, there are many ways an employer can help their employees manage their personal lives.
Family leave doesn’t just have a monetary value. It also gives your employees peace of mind through things like job security. In addition, it shows that you care about more than just the bottom line — which can go a long way in helping to establish your company culture credentials.
4. Remote Work
Remote work is here to stay, and whether it’s through fully remote options or a hybrid alternative, the ability to work from home is quickly becoming a common way to do business. What’s more, the pandemic has made it more than a perk reserved for highfalutin jobs.
This professional decentralization of the remote work concept has upped the ante when it comes to offering work from home as an actual benefit. If you want remote work to help you convince someone to work for you, it’s important to go beyond the basics.
This might include paying for at-home setups, such as routers and internet service. In addition, it’s important to make your actual work infrastructure remote-friendly. From meeting etiquette right down to small details like using professional video call backgrounds, make sure your remote work activities are thought out and help top talent feel included in your day-to-day operations rather than “on the outside looking in.”
5. Confident Onboarding
Onboarding is a quiet-yet-critical perk. Eighty-nine percent of new hires who fail within 18 months struggle to integrate into their new workplace. If you want top talent to stick around once you’ve convinced them to join you, you need to invest in onboarding them effectively.
This starts with basic things like using quality onboarding software to streamline the red tape part of the ordeal. From there, set up a clear system that can help new hires understand and acclimate to your workplace — whether that’s in the office, remotely, or both.
Using Perks and Benefits to Attract Top Talent
It doesn’t matter if you’re hiring a C-suite executive, a tech specialist, or a custodial engineer. Whatever the position, you want to have the right perks and benefits package in place to attract the best candidates for the job.
Use the above recommendations to create a custom-built and tailored package that can attract top talent. Then use that package as a tool as you work hard to get the best employees possible working for your brand.
