Over the years, employers are trying to provide good and attractive employee benefits packages to their employees. Studies have shown that employees who receive some kind of benefits that appeal to them or have addressed their needs tend to stay longer in the company and perform better.
While there is no individual benefit to address all employee needs, a combination of benefits serves to deliver such needs and thus promote stability in the workplace.
Employee benefits typically provide employees with financial security in times of illnesses, injuries, death and unemployment. Some benefits further improve employee lifestyle, depending on type of benefits offered by the employer. There are two main categories of employee benefits: mandated and optional.
Mandated Employee Benefits
As required by law, mandated benefits are such benefits that are sponsored by the federal or state government to provide essential needs of employees and their families. Mandated benefits are mainly social security, unemployment insurance and workers compensation.
Optional Employee Benefits
On the one hand, optional benefits are benefits that are not required by law, and yet are still offered by many companies to their employees. Such benefits include life insurance, health care insurance, disability insurance, retirement insurance, paid leave, and flexible compensation.
While these benefits represent the most commonly offered and availed plans, there are also other less common benefits that employees find attractive. Such benefits include: wellness programs, parking privileges, educational plan, company discounts and movie tickets, among others.
To provide better employee benefits and attract competent employees, companies can hire the service of PEOs (professional employer organizations) to manage employee benefits.
This way, the employer has less to worry about when it comes to choosing and managing the benefits of employees. Often, this is a good idea so that employees will be able to communicate their concerns better, in the absence of a HR management staff as in smaller companies.
In order for employees to better understand and avail of benefits, the employers can set up a website or distribute an employee benefits handbook to communicate the various benefits that they have available.
Some of the optional benefits, the employer has the option to absorb entire premium amounts or shoulder only a percentage to share the amount with the employee. Either way, employees will want to stay in the companies offering them various significant benefits to improve their well being as well as financial stability. With a comprehensive employee benefits package that is handled properly and communicated to employees, there are better chances of providing better employee benefits comparable to most top companies in the industry.
