4 Tips for HR Leaders to Boost Employee Benefit Support

By Cathie Ruffner

Mitigating turnover costs and risks are why so many companies invest so much time and treasure in employee benefits, which surveys show can be more powerful than even salary in stabilizing teams. Dollars can be matched, even raised. Proactive and engaging benefit offerings, by contrast, are difference makers in retention, as well as recruiting.

That’s probably not news. What is new is the extent to which companies are pushing the specificity and reach and hold of their benefits, weaving them more deeply into employees’ lives.

This trend isn’t about simply offering a health plan with a lower co-pay or boosting the annual dental coverage. In the continual effort to retain top talent, HR departments of forward-thinking companies are more willing to provide essential or important family supports such as subsidizing at home childcare and babysitting. Marsh & McLennan Agency is acting as well-being advisor to many clients, some of whom are partnering with Care.com. 

Because those types of benefits bring the company and employee closer together, cementing a give-give relationship of mutual benefit, they’re a very smart approach to stability in this very unstable business and personnel climate.

If you’re looking for similar ways to boost your benefits and support your employees, here are a few suggestions for these types of lifestyle and support benefits.

Childcare – Our example of helping clients with childcare benefits is instructive because the value isn’t childcare at a corporate office or other onsite location, it’s at home childcare. It’s additive and supportive of employee life choices as well as work from home realities. 

As HR leaders and C-suite executives increasingly smudge the lines between work hours and work geography, being a partner in major considerations such as childcare will be paramount.

Education – With benefits taking an active line on care for employee’s children, education benefits are increasingly intertwined. It’s not good enough, for example, to simply care for children at home while parents are working there too. Nurturing their growth at the same time is a value add to the value add.

That’s already translating to subsidized benefit packages that include top-end, online tutoring and school-approved augmented learning programs. Noodle Pro’s Schoodle service, for example, provides academic support, which is engaging, enriching and fun and is easily layered in with home care options and similar programs can guarantee that at home time is also quality time. 

Again, the focus is not education benefits for the employee. Those are important. But the wrinkle here is life supports that also enrich the employee’s family, easing the work they do outside their corporate responsibilities.

Wellness – Health and wellness will be at the forefront of benefits for the foreseeable future and companies will have to do more to show they take the issue seriously. The future benefit in wellness is not health care. It’s flexible options and proactive efforts that enhance wellness and safety at the office and at home.

That starts with benefits that underwrite open-ended personal supports such as remote mental health counseling or enrichment programs such as yoga or kickboxing – letting employees pick the options that fit their needs, interests and lives.

Additionally, HR leaders will increasingly investigate, and where needed, improve the wellness of shared workspaces. Investing in new air quality systems, for example, is now an HR benefit that employees will value.

Senior Care – Valuable mid-career employees are not just caring for children; they are often caring for elders too. Accordingly, benefit plans that invest in senior care and quality can be indispensable.  As with childcare or personal wellness, flexible subsidies or packaged partnerships with providers can offer even more comfort, stability and focus to employees who are increasingly navigating these unforeseen and often overlooked responsibilities. 

Easing life obligations such as education and senior care improve employee performance, especially if they are called upon to work from home. Providing life support benefits – benefits that support quality living for the entire family – is also a powerful signaling tool about company values and priorities. 

Just as importantly, benefits such as these can also significantly reduce turnover risks. Leaving a company that supports your child’s education and enriches your parents’ retirement or long-term care stops being entirely about pay packages and insurance co-payments and becomes more about recreating a work/life balance that’s actually more of a work/life partnership.

Benefits are moving in the partnership direction. If the trend continues, they will be difference makers in bringing good people in and keeping them on board.