12 Top Employer Benefits That Can Help You Attract and Retain Great Talent

If you’re a growing business, you’ve probably already begun to realize that hiring new employees isn’t always easy. There is a lot of competition on the market from businesses looking to acquire employees with various skill sets.

Because of the number of options job candidates have when exploring employment options, as a business, offering a competitive salary is really just the starting point when trying to attract interest. In many cases, having a well-structured benefits package is an essential and critical deciding factor for new employees.

Still, with so many formatting options available, it’s crucial that you take the right approach when creating your benefits offerings to ensure current and potential employees value them. In this article, we’ll help you understand the advantages of incorporating benefits into your recruitment strategy and the top employer benefits today’s employees are looking for.

Why Great Benefits are an Essential Recruitment Strategy

Recruitment activities can take a lot of time and resources away from your business. Not only do you need to create job listings and vet new resumes, but the interview and onboarding process can take a lot of time to complete, while taking away from your HR team’s ability to meet important deadlines. This doesn’t even consider the fact that one of your new hires doesn’t work out, and then you’re starting the process all over again.

However, when you incorporate benefits into your new hire packages, it can provide a number of advantages that can improve your recruitment strategy. Here’s how:

• It shows you’re really invested in your team – When you offer a selection of staff benefits, it shows your employees that you’re thinking about more than just profits. It proves you’re actively investing in your teams and want to help them feel more connected to the business.
• It can lead to happier employees long-term – Benefits are a great way to help your employees feel more confident about sticking around for the long haul. By offering them healthcare coverage and retirement savings plans, you reduce their need to explore other employment options and help to reduce your staff attrition rates.
• It makes your business stand out from others – The truth is, not all employers see the same value in offering benefits packages as others, even though they’re an important deciding factor for many new job applicants. By making sure your business incorporates benefits into your hiring packages, you help your business to stand out from others and increase the likelihood of receiving more applications.

12 Employer Benefit Types That Can Help You Attract More Employees and Keep Them

While deciding to create a benefits offering for your employees is a great move for your business, it’s important to remember that there is no one-size-fits-all approach when designing your package. You can explore a wide range of benefits types depending on your business’s and employees’ needs.

Below are 12 of the most sought-after benefit types that most modern-day employees are looking for:

1. Comprehensive Health Insurance

One of the most common and valuable benefits to offer your employees is healthcare coverage. Given the growing costs of personal healthcare coverage, providing employees with discounted options can provide them with a lot of long-term value.

There are a variety of different healthcare coverage options you could explore, including a certain amount of supplementary coverage with dental and vision plans. Outside of traditional medical coverage, you could also explore some level of mental health support. 

The critical thing to remember is that healthcare needs can vary from one employee to the next. This is why it’s important to offer as much flexibility as possible in the options you provide to your employees.

2. Generous Paid Time Off (PTO)

Most of us have found it hard to properly balance our work and personal lives at one point or another. With so much pressure placed on employees to perform well in their roles, it’s also essential to show them that it’s “okay” to want to take a break and recharge their batteries.

Offering a generous amount of paid time off (PTO) as part of your benefits offerings can be a great way to show employees you value their ability to take care of their personal lives. This might include additional sick days as well as extending paid vacation days past the minimum standards offered by most other companies.

3. Retirement Savings Plans

Many new and seasoned employees want to make sure they’re able to create a strong financial foundation for their future. As an employer, you can help them achieve this by providing them with a retirement savings plan as part of their benefits package. 401(k)s and other similar options show employees that you value their financial well-being and want to help them achieve it.

Most businesses match a certain percentage of employees’ contributions to their savings accounts. This can be a great way to encourage your staff to be more responsible with their savings and show your support through your own contributions. 

4. Flexible Work Arrangements

With so many businesses offering alternative work arrangements for their remote and hybrid employees, this has almost become more of an expectation, rather than an exception, for today’s workforce. While your business may not have the infrastructure to support this type of working format, the more flexibility you’re able to offer your employees, the better.

For example, part of your benefits offerings could be to allow employees to set their own hours or work a few days a week from home. This can help them to create a better rhythm between handling their personal and work responsibilities and give them more control over how and when they manage tasks.

5. Professional Development Opportunities

Another potential benefit to include is various professional development opportunities for all your employees. Consider offering to help cover the expenses for ongoing education costs, work-related certification programs, or creating a tuition reimbursement program.

Showing your teams that you’re invested in their ability to advance their careers can be a powerful motivator for them to stick with the business long-term. Professional development opportunities help employees improve their skill sets, and the business can also benefit from the new knowledge they’ve learned along the way.

Other ways you can support your employees’ growth are to provide them access to mentorship programs. Pairing your teams with successful industry professionals helps them learn essential best business practices and gives them a source they can go to when looking for helpful advice about their roles. 

6. Wellness Programs

Offering health insurance coverage is only one of the many different ways you can help your employees live healthier lives. Introducing wellness programs into your benefits package can also help to show you’re committed to your employees’ health.

The great thing about wellness programs is that they don’t need to fit a specific mold. You could decide to include things like free gym memberships, setting up on-site yoga classes, or offering free health screenings.

Offering more opportunities for your employees to take care of their health provides multiple benefits. Not only does it contribute to happier, healthier employees, but it can also help keep them more engaged when they’re working.

7. Family-Friendly Benefits

Depending on the type of business you operate, you may employ a wide range of individuals who come from all walks of life and have various family arrangements. Often, when you hire married individuals or those taking care of immediate family members, they will have more unique benefit requirements than others.

To ensure all of these employees feel taken care of, consider adding more family-friendly benefits options to your packages. Some of these options include additional parental leave for individuals having more children or providing benefits centered around childcare services. 

For employees taking extended maternity or paternity leave, you may also be able to introduce transitional work arrangements to help them return to the office. This can be incredibly supportive to new parents and show that you value the time employees spend with their families.

8. Life and Disability Insurance

Unfortunately, life events can happen from time to time that can really impact your employees’ lives. Providing them with benefits focused on giving them and their families a financial safety net in the event of a tragic life event shows that you’re a responsible and considerate employer.

For example, providing employees with short—and long-term disability coverage helps to ensure that if something were to happen that reduced their ability to work, they could still continue to receive a certain amount of financial aid.

Additionally, offering employees the opportunity to enroll in life insurance coverage can be another option for employees to provide for their families in the event of their passing.

9. Employee Discounts and Perks

Your benefits packages don’t always need to include only premium coverage options. Another strategy is to offer your employees various discounts or perks, such as lower pricing on the company’s products or services.

Another thing you could do is team up with local businesses and provide discounted pricing at local shops or restaurants. Consider setting up business travel rates for airlines, hotels, or rental cars. 

10. Commuter Benefits

Offering commuter benefits to employees who have to travel further distances to work can be a highly valuable addition to the compensation packages you create. This can help make traveling to and from work much more affordable for your teams.

To facilitate this, you could provide a stipend that can be used for public transportation costs or gas consumption. You could also create specific initiatives that encourage more green forms of transportation, like secure biking storage or installing complimentary charging stations for employees with electric vehicles.

11. Employee Recognition and Rewards

Whether you realize it or not, creating a positive company culture can be an employee benefit on its own. Showing your employees that you regularly recognize their contribution can be really important when trying to attract and retain great talent.

Setting up peer recognition programs, offering company giveaways, and celebrating essential employee milestones are all important ways to build morale in the workplace and get employees more excited about being part of the business’s journey. 

12. Personalized Benefits Options

One way to show your employees that you respect their unique needs is by customizing your benefits offerings to be more flexible and personalized to each staff member. This can include letting employees choose between multiple plan options based on their unique preferences.

You could also consider incorporating a health spending account (HSA) that gives employees more freedom to expense alternative forms of healthcare that traditional benefit options might not cover, such as acupuncture, massage therapy, or chiropractic treatments.

Create a Benefits Package That Resonates

Administering a strong benefits package is essential for attracting and retaining more talent. By following the strategies discussed, you’ll establish a benefits offering that helps your brand stand out from others and makes your employees feel like valued members of the organization.