In today’s competitive job market, employee benefits play a pivotal role in attracting and retaining top talent.
According to a 2023 Forbes Life survey, 40 percent of employers said team members leave their jobs in search of better benefits. Meanwhile, roughly half of employees said they were content with their benefits.
Some of the most sought-after benefits — employer-covered healthcare, life insurance and retirement plans — have remained unchanged over time. But others have sprung from the rising prevalence of remote work, causing companies to reassess and revise their benefits packages.
Remote workers named flexible hours, work-provided equipment, home office stipends and virtual team bonding exercises as their most desired benefits.
For the 62 percent of companies surveyed that changed their benefits in the past year, employee feedback was often vital in shaping their offerings to better address shifting demands and priorities.
By creating formal avenues to gather feedback and open discussions around team members’ wants and needs, companies can optimize their benefits package and keep employees happy, healthy and engaged. Take SmarterX, for example.
“We solicit regular feedback on our benefits in our quarterly engagement surveys and through channels like our CEO Office Hours. And we turn these insights into actions whenever possible,” said Chief Talent Officer Nicole Adams Kraus.
At SmarterX, Kraus and other leaders are determined to provide perks and benefits that optimize the employee experience and attract top talent.
SmarterX connects product data to complex environmental compliance regulations, enabling companies like Costco, Albertsons, Colgate and more to make, market and move consumer goods better.
How do you make sure that you evolve your perks and benefits package to meet what employees need in the moment?
We’ve never thought about benefits as a one-and-done activity. In planning, we start externally, take a societal view and ask ourselves if our benefits reflect what today’s workforce needs. Over time, we’ve expanded from core healthcare benefits into other areas such as financial wellness, friends and family, flexible ways of working and social perks like discounted pet insurance for the over 65 fur babies on our team. We offer secondary caregiver benefits, importantly taking away any gender-based implications for that role.
In addition, we embrace AI, training and asynchronous technology to support employee freedom, flexibility and productivity in every job. Our implementation of workforce collaboration and communication tools is the leading edge. And our LLM policy encourages employees to use AI to get tedious tasks done. We limit commutes and other wasteful activities and maintain a low office space profile. All of which helps us meet our employees where they are in our world today.
What benefits have you pulled back on over the last year or so? What have you doubled up on?
While we’re a startup, we know we’re competing with all-sized companies for talent, so the decision was really easy — we knew we had to invest in our people versus pulling back. So, we’ve intentionally increased the number and financial coverage of benefits for our team. Our team now has a higher-level baseline PPO plan, coverage for dependents and partners is the same as employee coverage at 95 percent, and we’ve added some cool new benefits. First, long-term disability; it’s an important safety net. New employee assistance programs are in place to support our team. In addition, we’ve implemented a generous, annual work-from-home and education stipend, and we’re creative with how those are applied. My favorite example on the work-from-home stipend front is the series of coffee and pastry gift certificates for one employee!
The decision was easy — we knew we had to invest in our people versus pulling back. We’ve intentionally increased the number and financial coverage of benefits for our team.”
What role does employee feedback play in making sure you’re putting together a relevant perks and benefits package that meets employees’ needs?
The mix of benefits we have today would not be in place without employee feedback. Two newer benefits are inspired by our business and came from one creative employee who said, “We need to walk the halls of our customers’ businesses” and “We should be enjoying the planet we want to save through our work!”
We do a lot of work with retailers, and to encourage our team to walk the halls we’ve given everyone an annual Costco membership. Because we believe our work will have a positive impact on the planet, we offer annual state or national park passes for the team. Finally, we realized that we were having too many meetings — everyone on the team was buried all week long. In the middle of 2022, we implemented weekly “Flex Fridays.” It’s not a holiday but a time when we can’t hold any standing meetings. It gives our team thinking time, time to crank on a new dataset, time to catch up and plan for the next week, and it’s much easier to hold an impromptu meeting on those days as well.
