In the competitive corporate landscape of today, bringing in and retaining top talent has become tough, especially for entrepreneurs. For that reason, you have to deliver the most market-competitive employee benefits and perks to your workers. Preferably, these have to be ones that your competitors are not offering. That is easier said than done though. Even if your budget allows this, the administration and management of a benefits plan can be tedious. Fortunately, there are some employment benefits management tricks that can ease your way, and let you create a complete benefits outlook for the year.
The Typical Entrepreneur Dilemma
When creating employee benefits plans, some entrepreneurs make the mistake of simply noting down the cost of the best employee benefits themselves. What they often forget is the communication cost and implementing said benefits into their corporate framework.
Depending on your unique plan (and how complicated the overall benefits packages are), making sure that everything runs as planned is not always possible, as well as expensive.
As an entrepreneur, you have to be extra careful about spending your resources wisely. It can be tempting to become the most adored CEO in the world, but, you need to consider your budget and its limitations before taking such a step.
Full Benefits Outlook for 2020
To that end, here are 4 tried-and-tested benefits management pointers for entrepreneurs to implement in the 2020 business year.
1. Implement Employee Benefits Administration Software
For the modern entrepreneur, automation is key to managing a business. The best thing to do in order to smoothen benefits-related plans is to implement special software that automates processes.
There may be some negatives to implementing a program, the benefits are still exceptional, from an administrative and financial and point of view.
There are several benefits management programs/software that, once put into place, can streamline a lot of things for, the employees and employers who want to take advantage of the benefits.
Here are some of them:
- Communication is streamlined (workers can understand how the benefits work without needing to consult the manager)
- Bring down costs of administration (with automated software, the need to consult an entire team of administrators /facilitators)
- Get consistent feedback from workers in real-time.
Putting an HCM solution into effect can streamline things, however, it depends on your overall budget. If investing in management software seems financially viable and required by the workforce, you should definitely do so.
2. Teach Employees About your Benefits Program
You may have a benefits plan already in mind, but there is still one missing piece of the puzzle. A particularly tough aspect of managing employee benefits programs is teaching what the benefits are, their positives and negatives, eligibility criteria, and other technical details. It’s a crucial aspect of engaging employees and workers. According to a survey, a large number of workers said that knowing the details of the benefits increased their chances of remaining with their current companies for the foreseeable future.
In case yours in a complicated benefits plan, clearly communicating whatever it is that you’re offering could be one of the best benefits management tips to follow. Create documents that cover everything, such as the actual blueprint of the benefit, the eligibility criteria, application procedure, and other FAQs etc. You can allow access to the benefits plan to the entire company, to further increase understanding of the benefits package.
3. Track the Returns from your Benefits
Once you’ve communicated and implemented your employee benefits plans, you can start tracking and evaluating their progress. There is a large number of variables here, so you’ll have to keep note of and correlate all of them.
Generally speaking, here are the 3 most important variables you should be tracking:
- Employee retention
- Employee turnover rate
- Profit
Before all else though, you need to consider your actual investment on employee benefits. Make sure that the cost doesn’t go to a point where it becomes unsustainable. For example, if you have provided Credit Karma access to your employees, find out if it is indeed viable, from a financial standpoint.
Once you’ve found your benefits cost average, calculate the cost of retaining employees, as well as how much financial damage your business takes due to employee turnover. Compare the final costs and see if there is any room for improvement.
4. Do Employee Surveys
Finally, you should be conducting monthly, bi-annual, or annual employee engagement surveys to find out the success of your employee benefits program.
Your management can benefit a lot by knowing directly what the employees want, in their own words. It can also improve communication on both ends. The surveys can take the form of questionnaires or one-on-one interviews (depending on the size of your teams).
Concluding the Benefits Outlook
Being smart in benefits management can improve your benefits outlook for the better. If you plan well and implement with agility, you can be sure to have a healthy and happy workforce in 2020.