Employee benefits have become not only an increasingly large component of total compensation packages, but they have also in many ways come to symbolize the amount of interest that an employer maintains in the well-being and productive longevity of their workers.
As a result, employee benefits packages in the eyes of many employees, both current and prospective, reflect the degree of reciprocity they may be able to reasonable expect for their loyalty and dedication, which in turn can have major impacts on everything from recruitment and retention to productivity.
As the employee benefits landscape continues to evolve right alongside work-life balance shifts and reexamined employer/employee relationships, this recent piece from BenefitsPro highlights 5 of the top trends that companies competing for top talent are leaning into in order to gain an edge over the rest of the field.
Top Focal Points In Employee Benefits 2024
- More Choices: One of the best ways to ensure that benefits packages can be tailored to the needs of your employees is to offer a wide array of less common voluntary benefits offerings, such as financial services, tax preparation assistance, and stress management counseling in addition to supplemental insurance options like critical illness, cancer, accident, and identity theft coverage.
- Education Debt: About 40 million Americans are currently saddled with outstanding federal student loans, meanwhile payments and interest accrual having resumed in the wake of the three-year-long pandemic pause. For employers that are unable to offer loan repayment assistance or contribution matching similar to retirement account contributions, employers can still offer meaningful assistance to their employees by directing them toward some of the resources and opportunities made available from the Save Plan - including payment reductions from 10% of discretionary income to 5% in some cases, loan forgiveness after 10 years of payments for debts that were less than $12 thousand when originated, and the potential for reduced interest accrual for enrolled borrowers.
- Housing: Employer-Assisted Housing (EAH) programs are helping bridge the gap in the market between workers who wish to buy homes and those that are financially capable of doing so. EAH programs can enable employees to set aside a portion of their income pre-tax to be used as a downpayment. These kinds of programs can also include services that assist employees in qualifying for rental units and downpayment contributions, as well.
- Family: The pandemic caused a lot of people to reevaluate their work-life balance, resulting in a large number of workers who now prioritize their family life and well-being perhaps to a greater degree than they may have in the past. Not every family has the same needs, however, which makes it vital that offerings are as diverse as your employee pool. Fertility benefits can be coupled with adoption support and day care offerings can be coupled with senior care and pet care services, for example.
- Retirement: Though retirement planning and account contributions are not equally prioritized by all employees, with older workers unsurprisingly much more concerned with retirement than younger workers, complaints about retirement benefits across generations seem to pretty consistently stem from disappointment that employer contributions aren’t larger. Employers that are unable to raise the dollar amount of their contribution matching program, however, can still provide significant additional value simply by providing additional resources that can help employees better navigate some of the advantages that accompany the SECURE Act 2.0, which can help employees both better plan for retirement and better financially manage emergencies when they arise during pre-retirement years.
You can read more about this topic and employee benefits on the rise in 2024 here.
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