15 Jan 2022
The average staff turnover in the UK is 15%, and with the current high employment and mass resignation, it’s a job-seeker’s market. When employees feel engaged with a company, they’re more likely to stay, and that has a direct, positive effect on recruitment and the associated costs.
Day-one enthusiasm
People choose to work for your company for different reasons. They like to have a job that’s a good mix between challenging and fulfilling, and ongoing personal development is key. Your approach to environment, social and corporate governance is increasingly important: a company’s culture and philosophy says a lot about how you treat clients and colleagues. And of course, pay and benefits is a good indication of how much you value your staff, and when you get this right it can really help engage them.
It’s great to see new recruits bright-eyed and bushy tailed on the first day of a new job. Reminding staff that you value them can help keep that day-one enthusiasm up.
It’s not all about pay
Salary is important, it needs to be commensurate with the role and aligned with the industry, but it can only go so far in engaging staff. Research shows that a pay rise only motivates staff for a couple of months.
It’s the employee benefits you offer where you can really get creative and make a difference. Looking after the financial, physical and mental health of staff is a constant reminder that your staff matter to you, and that increases the feel-good factor of working for you.
Making contributions into a pension, providing access to healthcare, putting an employee assistance programme in place, offering life assurance, signposting to specialist support: these are all benefits that leading companies offer and all companies need to if they’re going to keep up.
Sometimes the grass really is greener, and when people see that other companies offer such benefits, that can lure your best talent.
Engagement in practice
The benefits you offer are really brought to life when they’re made use of.
For instance, this might be when an employee struggles with a difficult time in their life and they get support from an employee assistance programme that helps them get their life back on track. Someone suffering with back ache from working long hours hunched over a laptop gets fast-track access to a physio that makes their back better and gives them exercises for long-term self-care. An employee struggling to get a doctor’s appointment, gets a virtual GP appointment. This list goes on.
When staff get such support because of the benefit of working for your company, your company gets the credit. They value you for valuing them. Financial, emotional, practical help that makes a tangible difference – above and beyond salary, job description and prospects – really makes a difference.
These are all everyday benefits that many companies offer, and many employees now expect. These are benefits we put in place every day for our clients, and we can show you how to make them work for your company too.
People talk
The advantages reach far wider than the employee that directly benefits. Staff talk to each other, and when someone has been looked after well, they tell others. This is how culture is built and how reputations flourish. Conversely, the opposite is true, when staff aren’t looked after, it has a detrimental effect that’s far-reaching.
Tell them
Some companies have great benefits that no one knows about. It’s really important to let your employees know what you offer. Encourage staff to make use of them. Bring in providers and advisers – us – to tell your staff what they’ve got. We see the difference it makes to staff when we tell them what their benefits mean in practice.
Offering the right employee benefits are some of the best ways to engage staff. It helps you recruit and retain, increase productivity and reduce absence. All areas that are good for your business, and that are only going to become more important.
