Win Your Employees with Great Benefits, Keep Them with Great Benefits Administration

05 January 2017

As the war for talent rages on, findings from a new SHRM survey tell us that benefits have become one of the top drivers in winning the fight. Millions of baby boomers are leaving the workforce each year. Generation Xers are moving into management positions. Millennials are arriving in droves to make up the largest segment of the workforce in U.S. history. Like it or not, the ability of your company to attract and retain talent has become more important and more challenging than ever.

You know the usual drill once you’ve found the perfect employee to fill an open position, you must prepare to make the offer and convince them to join your team. But most important, you negotiate the best benefits package possible and cross your fingers that it’s better than the others you know your candidate has most likely been offered.

Competitive benefits can make or break your ability to close on a new hire, but their importance doesn’t disappear once you’ve got your new employee in the door. Benefits have become increasingly important in retention as well.

A new SHRM survey proves the point. In this report, 19 percent of HR professionals (nearly 1 in 5) said their companies altered their benefits programs in the last year to aid in the retention of employees. Of these benefits, 95 percent of HR professionals rated healthcare as one of the three most important benefits, with retirement savings and planning (71 percent) and leave (50 percent) falling close behind.

As your potential employees evaluate future employers based on how those companies align with their career goals and lifestyle needs, the quality of employer-sponsored healthcare, retirement options, and paid time-off policies can be a deciding factor.

Of course, even if your benefits are good enough to get top candidates on board, you face the challenge of keeping them engaged and satisfied. You can leverage your benefits here, too if you have a benefits administration solution that helps you do that. Rather than sit still and hope your employees continue to appreciate your company’s benefits package, you need to enable them to understand, appreciate, and maximize their benefits. The best tool for that is a powerful, user-focused benefits administration system.

Most companies aren’t doing this. The SHRM survey we mentioned previously revealed that only 14 percent of HR professionals reported having employees who were “very knowledgeable” about their company’s benefits. It’s your responsibility and it creates a potential competitive advantage to educate your workforce on their benefits and make sure employees have all the tools they need to easily access, make changes to, and utilize their benefits. What good is winning the perfect employee with a flashy benefits package if they’re not able to make full use of it?

This is where having a great benefits administration system can make a huge impact. Of course, all solutions claim to be “great.” Let’s look at exactly what you should expect in a “great” benefits administration solution to engage employees.

First, you want a flexible, configurable, cloud-based platform. This will allow you to personalize your benefits administration system to not only your company’s specific HR needs, but also its culture and brand which is important for clearly communicating with and engaging your employees.

Second, you want a cloud-based application that automates your data entry and updates in real-time. This helps minimize the errors and complications with benefits selection and changes to personal information throughout the year. Furthermore, it ensures an efficient, stress-free process for your HR managers freeing them from the distractions of paperwork and administrative work to focus more on strategic measures like recruiting and retention.

Third, you want a benefits administration system that empowers your employees with an easy-to-navigate user portal and mobile options that allow them to take control of their benefits experience. All the information they need to make great decisions should be at their fingertips; you don’t want to lose an employee over their frustration with managing their healthcare options.

These standards are high, but if you want to find and maintain the best employees for your organization, your number one priority should be making sure your employees have the best benefits experience possible. Other benefits administration platforms weren’t built with the satisfaction of your employees in mind. Workterra is the only unified HCM suite that provides a user-focused, fully configurable, automated benefits administration system that works seamlessly with all other HR functions recruiting, onboarding, and ACA compliance. It not only provides an efficient, customized solution for your company’s benefits administration needs, but even equips your employees with decision support to help them understand, choose, and capitalize on the great benefits your company offers.

In the constant struggle to keep the talent your organization needs to perform at the highest level, don’t let your benefits administration experience be a weight on your HR managers or employees. Arm yourself with Workterra, and win the talent war.

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