Employee benefits are tricky matters. There’s a lot of different aspects of employee benefits that employers need to consider. Whether you are new to employee benefits, or simply want to gain a better understanding of how benefits work, then this blog post is for you.
Basic Employee Benefits
First, an introduction to the core employee benefits that many employers offer. Offering these basic employee benefits will promote loyalty among your current employees and encourage potential workers to apply.
Many employers offer their employees these basic benefits:
- Health care plans
- Dental and vision benefits
- Paid time off
- Retirement employee benefits/plans
- Life insurance
While there are countless other benefits that various employees offer, these are some of the basic employee benefits that job hunters often expect to see. Not including these in your company’s job descriptions will discourage talent from applying and lends a competitive edge to other organizations that do supply these.
For example, most full-time employees expect at least 1-2 weeks of paid vacation per year. When deciding on what your company’s vacation policy will be, make sure you specify whether time-off requests must be made verbally or in writing, as well as how far in advance employees must notify management. Also, do unused vacation days roll over to the next year? Or will unused time off dissolve at the end of the year?
If you feel ill-equipped to structure your company’s benefits packages, consider working with a professional employee benefits consultant. Experts in this field can answer all the questions you have and help ensure that no potential problem is left unaddressed in your policies.
Mistakes Employers Make With Employee Benefits
There are several costly errors employers tend to fall into while arranging basic employee benefits. To help you avoid these pitfalls, here is a brief introduction to three of these mistakes:
- Not taking care when filing paperwork. Sloppy paperwork management can result in a host of complications and extra costs. Make sure that you have a filing system to keep all important paperwork related to your employee benefits.
- Providing unnecessary or unwanted benefits. Employees care about the basic, important benefits much more than added fluff. We’d encourage employers to offer better basic benefits instead of increasing the number of benefits.
- Not being straightforward with employees about their benefits. Employees will show more appreciation if they simply understand the cost of their benefits and the extent that their benefits help them. Have an annual meeting to discuss employee basic benefits and how they work.
Get Help Managing Your Employee Basic Benefits Today
Here at Riverside Employee Benefits, we have a team of consultants who are ready to help you manage your employee benefits. We know how complicated and vital employee benefits are to every company and use our expertise in the field of employee benefits to help employers know how to manage benefits and educate their team about the benefits.
If you need additional help with figuring out which basic benefits to offer to your employees or how to navigate the market and heed your budget while selecting basic benefits, contact Riverside Employee Benefits today to schedule a consultation.