Employees want better benefits from their employers

Is cash still king? If not, employees might just say benefits are queen instead…

Better benefits are a top motivator for employees on the job hunt, according to a recent report from HCM software company isolved. Of the 56% of employees who’ve applied for a new job in the last year, 59% said they did so for a higher salary, while 51% cited more growth opportunities and 45% said better benefits.

“For employers who are able to show the ROI of their benefit plans and to market them well, and to choose a selection of benefits that means something to their populations, they will win the talent war,” Amy Mosher, isolved’s chief people officer, told HR Brew. “And, they’ll win from a business perspective, because turnover costs more than your benefit lines as an organization.”

Benefit cuts hurt employers and employees. It’s an employer’s labor market. The economy is unstable, and companies are trading human capital for AI capital. As a result, some companies are cutting costs by rolling back benefits. Zoom and Deloitte, for example, decreased their parental leave and PTO offerings, and consulting firm TTEC paused its 401(k) retirement plan match.

Mosher said that as employers move away from benefits, it will create a long-term retention problem for HR. And in the short-term, this strategy may negatively impact engagement and productivity.

“What happens now, now that they’re already thinking about looking for something in the future? It disenfranchises their experience at their current employer,” she said. “You’re going to lose productivity. You’ve got employees that maybe are aloof. Looking for a job is a full-time job…so you’ve got that real, time-spent-elsewhere kind of metric.”

Many employees are focused on caring for themselves and their families amid rising healthcare costs, Mosher said. So, when employers make changes to their benefits plans without considering the impact on the employee experience, they risk losing their best talent.

“As an employer, especially if you’re starting to cut things, take a real measured approach to what you’re impacting, and why,” she said. “And, which demographics of your organization you may be impacting disparately by making some choices.”