Originally published in BenefitsPRO September 23, 2022
An employee benefits package is a lot like coffee. Some are Starbucks, touting a gazillion choices, and others are local diners, offering a basic cup o’ joe.
If you’re an espresso aficionado, you expect to be able to customize the roast, type of milk, and sweetener of your beverage and would be disappointed when those options weren’t available.
But if you’re looking for your tried-and-true drip coffee, you’d be overwhelmed by the sheer volume of choices presented to you at the coffee house.
As an employer, the key is to understand what’s offered, what fits in your budget, and most importantly, what type of benefits your employees want.
Yet we see many employers put together employee benefits packages based on what they assume their employees want or what fits into their budget. And even when they have an enormous budget and offer a huge array of benefits, they’re often left scratching their heads when no one enrolls in them or utilization is low. Here’s a step-by-step process to ensure your employee benefits package stacks up:
1. Meet with your employee benefits consultant to review your options
This is the time to educate yourself on what’s available and possible. Ask your benefits consultant to present options for all types of benefits, especially ones you haven’t considered before. The idea is to start broad and then have leadership narrow the field to a few choices based on cost and complexity of rollout.
It’s also worth mentioning that some benefits could be 100% voluntary. If you’re a large organization, you often have negotiation power to get a highly discounted group rate on benefits your employee would have to pay full price on were they to seek them on their own.
2. Poll your employees
Once you have a defined set of potential benefit options, create a survey to ask your employees their preferences and benefits wish lists. And to make the results more meaningful and helpful, don’t just ask them yes or no questions about each benefit. Instead, show examples of cost implications for a sample population and provide estimated pricing and simple explainer information to inform them about each benefit.
3. Share the results, communicate your multi-year benefits plan, and roll out the new benefits
Once you tally the survey responses, you’ll understand what matters most to your team and may even discover a few new benefits they hope to have. From this, you can prioritize which benefits you’ll implement during the next open enrollment, which you’ll remove from consideration, and which ones you’ll offer later. For instance, you might roll out the two most popular benefits in Year 1 and then plan to add a few new benefits in Year 2 and then a couple more in Year 3. By creating and communicating and multi-year strategy, you won’t create a financial burden on the organization and will show employees you’re making advancements to cater to their needs.
4. Repeat the process annually
The great thing about annually surveying your employees is that their wants and needs change over time, so you’ll be able to serve them better as they do. For instance, when they started at the company, they may have been single, but now they’re married or have a child. Continually polling them helps you keep your employee benefits package relevant.
5. Don’t forget about continuing benefits education
While your benefits survey is annual, your communication about using them should be more frequent. Consider monthly themes that tie back to available benefits to keep them top-of-mind with employees and encourage utilization. For instance, May was Mental Health Awareness Month, a perfect time to highlight the Employee Assistance Program (EAP) you offer that otherwise might be underutilized.
6. Get started now — waiting until open enrollment is too late
Off-cycle is the best time to begin this process because it offers you the time you need to explore, educate, and survey before finalizing your finals. In addition, if you start now, you’ll have the information you need to begin open enrollment planning in the Fall for a seamless rollout.
These days, offering an attractive employee benefits package is a non-negotiable, often as important as (if not more so than) compensation, and a point of differentiation that aids in employee attraction and retention.
Though likely one of an employer’s biggest expenses, ask yourself the cost of not offering a robust employee benefits package. Plus, you need not make changes all at once; small incremental changes signal to your employees that you heard them and are working to meet their needs. Being proactive in your planning process will ensure you have a competitive employee benefits package that serves you and your employees.
