How to Analyze Your Benefits Package

The benefits package you offer your employees impacts your ability to retain top talent and could be the deciding factor for a potential job candidate accepting or declining a position with your organization. Yet, how do you know if your benefits package is competitive and what you are really offering your employees?

Providing a strong benefits package means you need to analyze your current benefits package to understand what you are providing and where you have room to improve. Historically, many companies could pay 100 percent of premiums for healthcare, vision, and dental and provide low co-payments. Rising healthcare costs make that prohibitive for many businesses. Ultimately, a thorough analysis will include checking out the competition and balancing the financial needs of your business with what your employees and future job candidates deserve.

Starting the Analysis

Start by going over your existing benefits package with your HR team. During this time, you can also review how many of your employees participate in your existing benefits offerings. If you currently offer voluntary life insurance, for example, and only one of your 100 employees is enrolled, you then need to evaluate why the number enrolled is so low. Maybe the cost is too high, or maybe you can do a more thorough job of letting your team know that this benefit is available and explaining how it could benefit them.

You need to determine whether the benefits you currently offer match up with what your team wants. For instance, individuals may be paying too much for coverage because a lot of employees with families have a high usage of prescriptions. In this case, there is a need for options that cater to the individuals and options that cater to the employees with families. The more that plans fit current employees’ needs, the more employees will elect to participate in your benefits offerings.

When looking at benefits offers and seeing that some are underutilized, it may make sense for you to speak with your team. Find out why they are not using the benefits you have made available. Getting their input can help you change course and offer benefits that better align with their needs. 

Competitive Analysis of Benefits

When you evaluate your own benefits offering, you also want to evaluate the offerings of your rivals. That's not too difficult to do, either. You can find a job posting from them where they list certain benefits. You may also find the information on their website. You are not looking to copy exactly what they offer — you are your own business with your own culture and identity.  But if you have employees who have left your company for a competitor, or you have had job applicants that ultimately took a job with a competitor, then benefits may be the reason why. By looking at your competitor's benefits package, you can get a good idea of whether your offering is competitive.

Gathering, collecting, and reviewing this information can give you a good picture of what candidates in the market are looking for. You do not need to match up your benefits exactly but offering benefits that candidates want will help you get their attention and attract them to come work for you. Ultimately, that's the goal of a good benefits package — attract and retain top talent.

Benefits Administration

 Benefits administration is a supremely important HR task. It ensures the benefits offered by your company are compliant with the law. It also helps guide your employees through any questions or issues they may have. 

When your employees have a question about healthcare options, you need to have an HR expert to be able to answer those questions. 

Alternatively, you can find an HR outsourcing partner Your chosen HR partner can provide guidance to your employees about which medical plans might be best for them. By outsourcing HR benefits administration, you take the burden off your internal HR team and get peace of mind knowing that your employees' benefits questions will be answered by experts in the field.

Keeping Benefits Affordable

Nearly 80% of small business owners worry about healthcare costs. When insurance companies give your small business premiums, they anticipate a certain level of risk. But you are just one small business so their risk is quite large.

When you work with an outsourced HR partner, you can join other small businesses and increase the size of the risk pool which lowers your premiums. This helps your employees through lower premiums than what you would get on your own.

By partnering with the right HR partner, you can offer your employees Fortune 500 benefits at more affordable  prices. Working with an HR partner not only takes the pressure of benefits administration off your plate, but it also gives you cost savings as well. 

An HR Partner can Help You Achieve Your Goals

There is no way to understate the importance of benefits. Your employees want them. Your candidates may choose you over a competitor because of them. And when you work with an HR partner, you can even save money.

As your business grows, the complexity and burden on you to provide top-notch benefits grows too. Keeping up with necessary and voluntary benefits can be confusing and frustrating. Deciding what benefits to offer, especially healthcare, often comes down to cost. And if you cannot find the right cost, your employees may not even use the plans.

That's where a respected outsourced HR partner can come in to help. We can help you evaluate your existing plan offering and determine what changes to make. Doing so gives you the chance to one-up your competition by offering best-in-class benefits to your team and using those same benefits to attract new top-talent in your industry. All of this can help your business grow to the next level.

Contact us today to learn how we can help you make strategic changes to your benefits offering.