Creating Benefits to Attract Top Talent
Episode 599: Show Notes
This week on the Strategy Hour podcast, we discuss how to create benefits that will attract top talent while also allowing your company to thrive. Running your business can often put you in situations where you have to compromise, but that doesn’t mean those compromises have to be permanent. Once you reach the point where you can take on new staff, you can begin to ask yourself what benefits you can offer versus what you want to offer. It won’t happen overnight, but setting out goals that build towards your vision for your company can be incredibly motivating!
Hiring new staff can come with a series of unanticipated costs outside of their salaries, like taxes and opening new 401K plans. While it may seem overwhelming at first, a little planning goes a long way. We’ve benefited greatly from having expert consultants advise us on how to take on new hires, from accountants to help us with cash flow, to HR’s advice on how to structure maternity leave and healthcare benefits. It’s been incredibly exciting entering this stage of our business, where we can grow our work community and set goals for how we can support our employees in every aspect of their lives! We fully believe that you are so much more than your job and your career, and we want to support all those elements from family, to friends, to health and alternative medicine.
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How to Create an Ethical Work Environment With Amazing Benefits
2021 was a big year for us. Both of us were excited and ready to take on new hires, but we wanted to do it in a way that supported our employees and enabled them to grow and thrive. We asked ourselves what tools we should use as a company to increase clarity in our communication, to set expectations, to highlight benefits, and to keep evolving as the CEOs and the owners of a business. At the same time, we had to do it within budget while maintaining healthy margins. Since we don’t have endless resources we had to find a happy medium while laying out plans for how we would reach our goals for providing more comprehensive and better benefits.
The first step is taking the pulse of your company and determining what you can provide. When you’re first approaching hiring new employees, it can be very easy to get caught up in the base salary number. But if you’re truly planning for growth, then you need to identify what the whole package will look like. One of the things that we didn't anticipate, the first time we tried to do this years ago, was the additional costs outside of salary that it takes to bring an employee, like tax, opening a 401K, and insurance. That’s why you need to make sure you have the cash flow to support not just new salaries, but all of the associated costs. A good rule that takes this into account, is to budget for 20% above a base salary since that gives you room to explore benefits options as well as cover unforeseen costs.
This is an opportunity to reflect on what your policies are, what you’d like them to be, and what is important to you as a business owner. We took the opportunity to ask ourselves what we wanted our company culture to look like and how we could support that with benefits that align with our policies.
How to Identify What You Can Offer Now and What You Can Scale Up to As Your Company Grows
You should be asking yourself, not just what benefits you can afford to offer right now, but what you want to offer in the future as you grow and scale up. We benefited tremendously from working with a consultant to help us develop our employee handbook and put into writing a lot of the things we were already doing. Throughout that process, we worked with our financial advisor and our accountant to explore what other benefits could look like. They are integral to helping you figure out what you can afford, what is realistic, and what’s expected above and beyond. Advisors can help with important legal and cultural steps that need to happen, which is why it’s so beneficial to consult with a Human Resources specialist so you don’t rely on assumptions or misinformation! Specialists are also great resources for figuring out, not just what you want your benefits to look like at this stage but what you’d like to aspire to in the next six months to six years.
Shifting Your Mindset to Collective Dependence
So much of our approach to benefits has been about focusing on collective dependence, which we have continuously explored with our coach. Since we’ve built a company that has done everything that we set out to do for ourselves as two individuals, we’ve come to the next stage where we’re looking to the next level. We’re moving our mission forward and focusing on clients and how to impact them on a deeper level while also creating a team culture. We want the people who work for our company to benefit from the lifestyle that we've built inside this special business! Remember that things can evolve as quickly or as slowly as you want, a lot of this stage of business is about shifting your mentality to the collective rising of your company, the culture, and the people within it.
Instituting a 401K and Helping Our Employees Plan for the Future
We’ve given considerable thought to the benefits our company is offering and how they are allowing us to attract top talent. We want people to work here, not simply because of the work that we’re doing, but because it’s a place where they can have the certainty of knowing that they will be supported and have access to the types of things they need in order to be comfortable, content, and supported, while also having time and space to rest and prioritize their family and friends.
We’re extremely proud of the company 401K plan, with matching, which we instituted along with our new hires. It truly allows for people to not just think about today, and what their family needs now, but it also sets them up for the future. There’s a common misconception that you won’t have access to one when working for a small company, but we want people to realize that that’s not always the case. It is also possible for small companies to offer a retirement plan! All it takes is some conscious planning and budgeting. We are so excited about being able to offer this benefit and its ability to set our employees up for success!
Our Maternity Leave Policy and Why You Are More Than Your Job
One integral benefit that we are super passionate about is a generous and expansive maternity leave policy. Whether you’re giving birth, adopting, or have a more complicated setup, we want to support our employees in their family life. We’ve had first-hand experience and extensive insight into the immense pressure families experience when they are restricted by a limited time-off policy. Despite being a small company, we modeled our maternity leave policy on a much larger corporation that we admire because their policy reflected our values. We believe that your job is not your identity and that ultimately, the goal of life is to foster relationships. That is why our maternity leave policy applies to so many different scenarios, whether you’re a mother, father, or have had a child come into your life in a completely alternative fashion!
Why We Love Employee Autonomy
One of the benefits we’re most excited about affords our employees the autonomy to apply it to their life however they choose. We’ve opted for a flexible annual stipend to customize their experience with us. Our employees are extremely varied and therefore have a range of needs that we would struggle to cover in one comprehensive plan. Instead, the flexible annual stipend allows them to choose what they need from a whole range of categories of items and services that can be reimbursed. It includes things that are health and childcare related like babysitting, childcare, and fertility treatments, to broader needs like a gym membership or alternative medicine This is a great way to be inclusive of the variety of needs we see in our team. We have team members of all ages, some of them have kids and some of them don’t, and we also have members who are on their spouse’s insurance, while others are not. And so we had to ask ourselves: what does it look like to create something that everyone could benefit from?
Health Insurance and Beyond in 2022
Our goal is to eventually offer full health insurance coverage, and if things go according to plan that should be possible within the next six months to a year. This doesn’t mean we’ll be getting rid of the flexible annual stipend, because we want our employees to have access to the options that fall outside of traditional health coverage. This is especially relevant to our team since holistic wellness is a big part of our team culture. Getting healthy and staying healthy doesn’t always require the same things so we want our employees to have access to what works for them. Similarly, but concerning fitness, we included gym memberships, digital subscriptions, and even fitness equipment. We also have technological and office-related items that are included, like a new laptop, desk, chair, or microphone. It also includes personal development opportunities, like courses and retreats.
Quote This
One of the things that we didn't anticipate, the first time we tried to do this literally years ago, was the additional costs outside of salary that it takes to bring an employee on.
Highlights
How to Create an Ethical Work Environment With Amazing Benefits [0:04:22]
How to Identify What You Can Offer Now and What You Can Scale Up to As Your Company Grows [0:08:17]
Shifting Your Mindset to Collective Dependence [0:11:01]
Instituting a 401K and Helping Our Employees Plan for the Future [13:07]
Our Maternity Leave Policy and Why You Are More Than Your Job [24:43]
Why We Love Employee Autonomy [29:31]
Health Insurance and Beyond in 2022 [0:30:45]
ON TODAY’S SHOW
Abagail & Emylee
The Strategy Hour Podcast
We help overwhelmed and creative entrepreneurs break down their Oprah-sized dreams to create a functioning command center to tame the chaos of their business. Basically, we think you’re totally bomb diggity, we’re about to uplevel the shiz out of your business.
KEY TOPICS
Employee Benefits, Salaries, New Hires, Human Resources, Planning, Health Care Coverage, Flexible Annual Stipend
