It takes a lot of initiatives to come together to lead to long-term business success. Great products, innovative marketing, sales initiatives, and impeccable customer service are critical for helping organizations grow. However, another essential element is having the right company culture in place.
When you have a good company culture, employees are more likely to stay motivated and productive. However, ensuring your culture represents the core values you’re trying to achieve takes a lot of persistence and hard work.
Offering employee benefits is one of the most impactful ways to improve your company culture. These additional employee perks play an essential role in creating a more positive working environment and reinforcing the company’s commitment to its employees.
How Benefits Impact Company Culture
Although employee benefits might seem like an extension of employee compensation packages, they actually bring a number of advantages to businesses and their developing departments:
- Improves Morale – Having a good benefits package in place can have a positive impact on employee morale. When employees feel like their employer really cares about them and not just their work performance but also their personal well-being, it helps to instill a deeper sense of value and appreciation. This helps to reduce stress and creates more motivation day to day.
- Helps with Hiring and Retention – When competing with other brands in highly competitive markets, comprehensive benefits packages can be a major differentiator. Offering fair wages in addition to various business perks helps to attract a wider pool of talent and makes it less likely that the business will experience higher staff turnover rates.
- Reinforces Company Values – The values your business has aren’t always tangible for employees to recognize. However, benefits help you better express how important it is for employees to live healthier lives or maintain a good work-life balance. When the benefits you provide highlight or strengthen your company’s values, it can create a strong positive message to employees and customers alike.
- Keeps Teams Productive and Accountable – Employee benefits can have a bearing on whether or not employees feel adequately supported by their employer. When you proactively address some of the common stressors employees have, like getting affordable healthcare or having enough paid time off for vacations, it helps them to focus and engage more when at work. This creates a much more enjoyable working environment for everyone and reduces toxic attitudes.
Strategies for Aligning Employee Benefits With Your Core Values
To make sure your benefits packages resonate with your employees, it’s important to look for ways that your offers can align with your company’s core values.
This means you’ll want to take careful consideration into what exactly your business stands for and how you provide tangible proof of it.
Below are some strategies you can use to make sure your benefits package resonates with employees:
Maintaining Work-Life Balance
For most employees, having a job that affords them a healthy work-life balance is a top priority. This helps them reduce day-to-day stress and can increase job satisfaction over time. As an employer, there are ways to ensure the benefits you provide help them achieve this balance.
Below are some potential benefits options you can put in place to help employees put their work and personal priorities into their respective places:
1. Offering Flexible Work Arrangements
It can be incredibly beneficial for the business and employees not to limit start and end times throughout the week. By allowing more flexible working hours, businesses can work with their employees to accommodate preferential schedules and better support different lifestyles.
2. Provide Generous Paid Time Off (PTO)
Everyone needs enough time to unwind throughout the year. Employers could consider offering additional paid holidays for their employees rather than just offering the bare minimum amount of PTO.
3. Include Childcare Support Options
Many employees have families they support, and finding the time and resources to care for them can be challenging. Employers can make childcare support options part of their benefits offerings through on-site daycare or subsidies to help manage childcare expenses.
Improving Employee Wellness
When you think of your employee’s overall wellness when creating a benefits plan, it’s important to remember that you shouldn’t limit your offerings to just physical wellness.
All employees need to take care of their mental health. So, you should look beyond just offering traditional health insurance options.
Look for ways to incorporate more comprehensive benefits that include coverage for medical, dental, vision, and mental wellness initiatives. This is a much more effective strategy for ensuring all your employee needs are addressed.
Many companies find providing access to employee assistance programs (EAPs) beneficial. These programs can provide free, confidential counseling or support services for employees who need them.
These can be a great way to encourage your employees to take appropriate stress management measures to help them live a more fulfilling and healthy lifestyle for themselves and their families.
Providing Financial Security
Considering the economic stress that many modern employees are under today. It’s important for businesses to look for ways to help their employees achieve more financial security in the long term.
Businesses can achieve this by offering a range of benefits designed to help employees improve their financial management strategies and save up for retirement.
Some of the ways business you could help in this area include:
- Offering Competitive Salaries: When doing comparative research in the market to understand typical starting rates for certain roles, it can be advantageous to businesses to be more competitive in their salary offerings. This shows employees that you want to make sure they’re well-compensated for the work they accomplish for your business.
- Incorporating Retirement Savings Plans: Offering retirement savings plans like 401(k)s can help employees create long-term financial security for themselves and their families. Businesses can also consider offering higher percentages when matching employee contributions to help further incentivize making more financially disciplined decisions.
- Providing Financial Planning Resources: Providing access to financial planners or other supporting resources can be a great way to help employees get advice on creating sustainable budgets or managing their debt effectively.
As part of your benefits, you add financial planning tools to support your employees outside traditional healthcare or retirement plans.
Encouraging More Professional Growth
When you take the time to support your employee’s personal and professional growth, it’s a win-win for everyone. The more opportunities employees have to learn and develop new skills, the more value they can bring to the organization.
At the same time, employees can expand their careers and are more likely to take on more senior-level roles.
Employee benefits can be extended to support these initiatives. By covering all or a portion of expenses for vocational training, employers can show that they are motivated to help employees perform at their best. This strengthens the working culture of the entire organization.
Keep Shaping Your Company Culture
When you prioritize creating valuable employee benefits, it helps build a company culture that reflects your core values. Follow the strategies provided, and you’ll ensure your employees’ physical, mental, and financial well-being! You’ll also position your business for long-term success.
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Author Bio: Frank Mengert
Frank Mengert continues to find success by spotting opportunities where others see nothing. As the founder and CEO of ebm (https://getebm.com) a leading provider of employee benefits solutions, Frank has built the business by bridging the gap between insurance and technology-driven solutions for brokers, consultants, carriers, and employers nationwide.
