Small and midsize business owners often share the same challenge when it comes to providing employee benefits — it's too expensive. Employees want the benefits that Fortune 500 companies offer, but they do not realize how much it costs for companies to provide them.
If that sounds familiar, maybe your employees are on to something. Achieving Fortune 500 level benefits is not as challenging as you might think, even as a small or midsize business. Aligning with the right professional employer organization (PEO) can get your benefits package to top tier status.
Why Does My Company Need to Offer Benefits?
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Offering benefits is one of the best ways to set yourself apart from your competitors. An attractive benefits package can give your team the assurance that you are invested in them, and they will, in turn, invest their best efforts in your company.
When building a company, the best investment you make is your team. Hiring and retaining top talent is crucial to achieving growth as a company. So many employees today look not only base salary when considering a job offer, but a company's entire benefit offering. In fact, 95% of employees said they value health benefits over financial compensation. Many small businesses think they can get away without offering many benefits or only offering what they have to by law. Unfortunately, it's often those businesses that are unsuccessful because they cannot hire the best talent in their industry. Without offering a clear and distinct benefit package, candidates will seek employment elsewhere.
What Benefits can I Offer?
Benefits can include many different options. Aside from mandatory benefits, you may be required to provide such as workers' compensation and Social Security payments, other voluntary benefits you can provide include:
- Health insurance
- Vision insurance
- Dental insurance
- Retirement programs
- Tuition reimbursement
- Wellness programs
- Paid time off
- Peer to peer rewards
- Random holidays
- Free food and drinks
- Telecommuting options
Each of these benefits can strengthen your overall offering and help you attract better talent. Adding some of these to your benefits package can also give you a leg up on your competition and make it more likely that the better employees will end up with you instead of your rivals.
Can I Afford Benefits?
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Ultimately, whether you can afford to offer benefits comes down to your business decisions, and the affordability of many benefits that employees desire is closer than you think.
A PEO can provide you with the ability to offer better benefits than you could get on your own. Take health benefits, for example. Many companies complain that healthcare is too expensive to offer because, as a small business, the premiums are simply too high. A PEO can bundle your small business with other small businesses to negotiate better rates for all of their members. This leverage helps you provide great health coverage for your team in a cost-effective way for your business.
Health insurance companies want to minimize their risk so small companies will usually end up with higher premiums because they have fewer employees in the pool. By bundling many small businesses together, a PEO can negotiate better coverage at lower rates, regardless of the size of your company. Health insurance companies work with PEOs because they have a larger employee pool so the insurer's risk is minimized. This relationship allows you to provide top-notch benefits to your team.
Getting a great benefits package for your business is not out of reach. You simply need to work with the right PEO to help guide you through the process of deciding what benefits to offer and how to best administer them. Once you do that, you can be more engaged and attentive to your team, hiring better employees - and keeping them - by offering them a world-class benefits package.
What's Next?
Now that you know a stellar benefits package is within your reach and you know how to get it, you need to reach out to a PEO to help get you there. Aligning with the right PEO can give you access to a trusted advisor who can help you achieve your business goals.
Your PEO will also get you quotes for top benefits and help your business administer those benefits. They will also manage your payroll process, tax withholdings, and retirement distributions. All this combines to save your company lots of headache but more importantly, time and money.
By building a relationship with a trusted PEO, you can attract and retain top talent by offering affordable and competitive benefits. This will ultimately grow your business and enable you to outshine the competition.
