Baby boomers continue to retire, the jobs they leave remain difficult to fill, and employers are getting increasingly creative when trying to fill them. How creative?
More and more, they are turning to a tried-and-true method of process improvement — talking to the people who are actually doing the job about how to improve things. With existing and prospective employees still in the driver’s seat, executives are not only spending more time designing and redesigning their benefits — beyond the vital task of shopping for affordable medical insurance — they are listening for those outside-the-box ideas.
As a result, there is a fair amount of individual tailoring going on. “Companies want to do their best to retain the folks they have,” notes Jim Jeffers, regional director for Robert Half. “Companies are doing a really good job surveying their employees and asking them what they need to stay.”
To measure the level of creativity, we reached out to Jeffers and three other professionals who are knowledgeable about the benefits market, including: Tara Conger, president of Tandem HR; Austin Kassner, president and franchise owner for the Madison office of Spherion; and Tammy Steller, service model manager for Total Administrative Services Corp. (TASC). Here are the trends they identified.
1: Leveraging lifestyles
According to Conger, lifestyle spending accounts (LSA) are essentially a stipend or allowance fully funded by the employer and considered taxable income when spent. It’s a good benefit option for companies that want to support their employee’s holistic health or wellness in a way that promotes equity. Employers can use LSAs to cover gym memberships, spa services, pet care, mental health, and nutrition. They can also partially or fully reimburse employees for professional development, work-from-home setups, and even charitable giving.
The creativity extends beyond employees enrolled in a health insurance benefit. “If an employee doesn’t take the medical insurance — some do, some don’t — this is a way to even that out, or just offer it to all employees because it’s very flexible,” Conger explains. “An LSA allows employees to tailor their benefits to their individual preferences and lifestyle needs.”
As Conger notes, LSAs are not just for large corporations flush with cash. Companies of all sizes are wrestling with recruiting and retention, and when it comes to related strategies, these accounts are an alternative to more restrictive, one-size-fits-all benefits.
2: Unlimited PTO
Paid time off remains a popular benefit, so popular that Robert Half research says 73% of workers want that time off and 84% of employers are providing it. However, some employers keep trying to top one another with a new concept — unlimited paid time off. Well, not exactly unlimited. Policies should be developed to maintain certain get-the-job-done expectations and to draw boundaries so that employees don’t abuse the privilege, but allowing employees to take as much vacation as they need can be a real differentiator in the attraction and retention game.
“It’s obviously a policy rooted in trust, so assuming that the employees will manage their time responsibly is an important component,” Conger notes. “More employers are leaning that way.”
Most employers that offer this benefit find that few employees take more vacation than they otherwise would have taken. So, with this in mind, and given factors such as historically low unemployment rates, large numbers of unfilled jobs, and declining worker engagement, what do employers have to lose by offering something that not long ago would have been dismissed as too accommodating? When managed well by supervisors, unlimited paid time off now is considered a good tool.
“These labor trends should continue for the foreseeable future,” Conger adds. “HR professionals with the responsibility for talent acquisition have a hard time attracting and retaining top talent with employee benefits that are less than competitive. Sure, pay is important, but I think creative benefits are just as important because why should I choose your company over someone else?”
3: Stretching sick days
Since the COVID-19 pandemic, Kassner says there has been an evolution in the definition of “sick day.” It appears to be drifting more toward “personal day,” and more employers are becoming flexible for the sake of employee well-being. “Increasingly, employees are taking sick days for a variety of reasons versus what traditionally an employee may have used the sick day for,” Kassner explains. “One of those reasons is an expansion of folks feeling comfortable and empowered by employers to take sick days for mental health reasons, and sometimes even just because someone feels overwhelmed. Whether or not it’s something going on personally, they just feel like they can’t bring their best selves to work.”
Certainly, the line gets blurry between sick days, PTO days, and vacation days, but Kassner believes it’s related to other trends, including offering individuals flexibility to manage their work-life balance. “So, that kind of combines with things employers are doing themselves, which is probably more flexibility on what a sick day is, or offering specific mental health days. They are just personal days, so it’s expanding that concept.”
As employees feel more empowered to use that time, Americans are taking more days off and fully using all the time off they are given, which is a departure from the pre-pandemic period. Kassner says some of the stigma has been removed from taking the necessary time off, and combined with the shift in the labor market, it has led to an increase in the amount of time off that’s offered and utilized.
4: Minding mental health
With the aforementioned trends underway, it’s only natural that mental health support is another health-wellness benefit that’s offered and used more. Some of this increased focus stems from the pandemic and some of it also stems from changing cultural importance and awareness around mental health. Another impetus is the tight labor market, and as employers compete for talent, reinforcing their mental health benefits is one way to differentiate themselves to prospective employees.
According to Conger, they have good reason to. Research from SHRM, the Society for Human Resource Management, found that one in three U.S. employees say their job has made them feel overwhelmed or left them depressed at least once a week, and almost one-third have considered quitting for mental health reasons. As Conger notes, those are big numbers, and so offering mental health resources is an emphasis in employee assistance programs (EAPs). There are §providers that offer mental health services and can pinpoint what a struggling person needs. In some cases, coverage is provided by medical insurance, but it’s also provided in long-term and short-term disability, life insurance, and disability insurance.
“It could be counseling services or stress management programs, but they can have a profound impact on employee well-being, retention, productivity, and engagement scores,” she notes.
HR personnel and supervisors are being encouraged and in some cases trained to look for signs that their employees need help, and when they do, help them navigate the system because it’s a rapidly evolving field. The landscape can be confusing, but it’s a shared responsibility between health care providers, benefits providers, and management to have an understanding of what benefits employees have access to so they can get the support they need when they need it.
Says Kassner, “It can come from the health plan. It can come from additional offerings that the employer would provide employees. A lot of it stems from the increased importance that employees and job candidates place on the mental health support employers are offering. That’s a big theme that we’ve seen over the past three years as it’s becoming increasingly important for candidates and employees or potential employees.
“That’s something that they value and they want to see — that there are resources available through their place of employment,” he adds “As a result, employers are spending more time trying to understand the benefit landscape around mental health benefits to ensure that their existing health programs are covering that. Where there are potential gaps or opportunities to expand coverage, they are exploring that as well.”
To offer more privacy and protection, more organizations cover telemedicine for a variety of medical services, including mental health services, which is a trend that began during the pandemic. “COVID has changed the world because nobody wanted to go to the doctor unless they absolutely had to because they were afraid of getting sick, so everyone’s doing virtual telemedicine visits,” Conger states. “That trend skyrocketed during COVID, and that’s continuing. It has not continued to the level that it did during COVID, but people got used to that convenience and that ease where you can just talk to somebody and share your symptoms and they can just call in a prescription for you.”
EAPs are especially important here but according to Jeffers, it’s still the case that a lot of employed professionals don’t understand or know what they are. “It’s a fantastic resource to take advantage of, with employee assistance programs being an employer provided, intervention program designed for workers and resolving personal problems that could adversely affect work,” he states. “That could be anything from family counseling, child care, senior care, legal consultation, financial consulting, emotional health assistance, alcohol or drug abuse, and work-life balance.
“A lot of employers are starting to offer that,” he adds, “because they know that if an employee is happy and can get the help they need outside of work, they can be more productive inside of work.”
5: Battling burnout
Part of improving mental health is preventing job burnout. Many of the same EAPs used for mental health — in-house exercise programs, apps that help employees deal with stress, access to virtual therapy sessions — can be used for this purpose. Steller adds to that list pet care accounts for those who bear the burden of pet care costs, home office accounts for those who find themselves working remotely or in a hybrid situation, and tuition reimbursement accounts for those who want to upskill.
Another trend has employers fighting employee burnout by revisiting their leave policy. Notes Steller: “This may be as simple as allowing for a paid afternoon off to revitalize themselves, making a ‘no meeting day’ mandate where a certain day of the week is for work time only, or just encouraging employees to take their personal time off to do something they enjoy.”
6: Multiplying medical
Jeffers noted that even with more creative health, wellness, and well-being benefits, job seekers still value good medical insurance the most — right after a competitive salary. It is the most stable and sought-after benefit for employees and their families, especially with add-on coverage for dental and vision. Based on Robert Half’s research, 82% of workers want health care coverage and best of all, 88% of employers provide it.
The newest trend in this benefit is that employers are providing more options for employees to choose from, rather than just selecting coverage for them. With employers offering different plans and options, it’s another example of the tailoring of benefits designed to appeal to a broad swath of prospective employees. “Some of them are more affordable, some might be a little higher such as the higher cost of a lower deductible,” Jeffers says. “It seems like there’s been more options that employers are offering compared to the past where they just said, ‘Hey, this is our one plan. You either take it or not.’”
Barriers still exist to employee adoption because many are still getting accustomed to being their own health advocates, which requires going through plan options and finding the best coverage. Jeffers believes that more employees are getting smarter and more savvy as health consumers, in part because it’s such a valuable benefit. “People look outside of their salaries at the health benefits that they’re provided, especially if they have a family and are going to be providing the health benefits for either a spouse or for their children … You also see a lot of companies picking up increases in health insurance premiums, so they absorb that cost so that it’s not passed on to their employees.”
Pandemic ripples
Steller is among the benefit experts who think the pandemic, while in the rear view mirror, has caused the workforce population to shift the significance placed on health and wellness benefits, and she adds that employers must understand what’s on the horizon. “It is now more important than ever for employees to protect themselves from illness or health related financial hardships,” she notes. “Add in the cost of health insurance being on the rise and lower salary increases projected in 2024, and you have a perfect storm for mental and physical burnout.”
