How To Tailor Benefits For All Your Employee Groups

Benefits can differentiate your company and lure top talent your way granted you are giving employees what they want. Long gone are the days when employees would stay simply because they got health insurance and a retirement savings plan. Different workers want different things out of their benefits, which is why they need to be tailored to meet the needs of all the employees within an organization. Give the people what they want! “Employers don’t do a good job of giving employees benefits they want,” says Cali Williams Yost, CEO & Founder of Flex+Strategy Group | Work+Life Fit, Inc.. “They need to take the time to understand what the employees’ needs and wants are.” According to human resource experts, companies have to offer a whole suite of benefits but before they can do that, they need to do their own research to figure out what their employees actually desire. The research could mean hosting focus groups, surveying workers and/or having town hall meetings. It could also mean looking at what employees as a whole are spending their medical dollars on and offering programs to help in those areas. [Related: Employers, here are the benefits employees want most] Bruce Elliott, manager of compensation and benefits for the Society for Human Resource Management, says there could be for example instances where there are a lot of cholesterol, hyper tension or stress related medicine being prescribed within the organization. The company can take that data and design exercise and diet programs to help combat those chronic and sometimes costly diseases. Elliott also has an open door policy where employees can come to him and tell him about programs they would like to see implemented. “Employees stopped by and said we went to this Zumba class and it was awesome and as a result we implemented Zumba class for a couple of months until it petered out,” he says. If you’re company employs a lot of millennials, one benefit you should be offering is a high deductible health plan, says Elliot. Tailor your health benefits Within the traditional health benefits realm, Rose Stanley, a total rewards practice leader, WorldatWork, the non-profit human resources association, says companies have to try to tailor those offerings in a way that addresses the needs of their workforce but at the same time keeps costs in line. Let’s say you have a workforce that has a lot of instances of high blood pressure. Companies can design a medical plan that gives employees generic blood pressure medicine at no cost but puts the entire expense on the employee if he or she chooses a brand name medicine. At the same time the company can offer a wellness program that addresses the high blood pressure and provides ways to reduce it. Stanley says companies have to think outside the box and offer things that aren’t only centered around their employees’ physical health but other aspects whether it’s mental or financial health. “Companies are expanding wellness programs to hit the mental side and the spiritual side,” says Stanley. “They are starting to look at wellness in a more holistic way.” Communication is key Having a host of benefits to offer employees is great tool for recruitment and retention, granted employees know about the offerings. Unfortunately Yost says too many companies drop the ball when it comes to getting the word out about the benefits. Employers may offer great benefits but if their employees aren’t using them then they aren’t getting a return on that investment, she says. Companies have to “constantly and consistently” communicate the benefits available, says Yost. “People are busy companies have to find creative ways to keep it front of people.” So how can you go about being creative? Yost says some of the ways to get the word out is to host a “benefits fair” each quarter where you lay out all the benefits in a cohesive plan. You can also host a Webinar once a quarter that outlines all the options and include employees telling their stories about how they used different benefits. You can also turn to social media to alert employees either through a company portal, the official Facebook page or Twitter feed. “If you’ve done your research and determined this is something people value in your organization and they use it, it will help you attract and retain valuable talent,” says Yost.