Employee Benefits Trends 2021- Ideal for Recruitment Strategy
Employee benefits and HR policies have always been framed considering a life and work environment that is relevant to employees. These scenarios have dynamically changed today. While several benefits are related to onsite work performance, leadership, etc., many employee benefits are around personal benefits. These included annuity, gratuity, provident funds, home loans, gym membership, shopping coupons, club memberships, travel, etc.
In the 2021 world, people across the globe find many types of employee benefits redundant or less meaningful. If you are looking to attract a dynamic workforce that is struggling to survive the changes brought by the pandemic, it is time to relook and revise your employee benefits. Individuals prefer working with companies that have employee benefits that make more sense in the way we live and experience life in the wake of the pandemic.
Moreover, the current trend of home-based employment and remote working also demands employers to change their perspective about employee benefits. Numerous companies that are known as good workplaces are changing employee benefits trends.
Taking expert advice from a professional employment agency will help you make the right decisions about employee benefits. If you need offshore teams, it would be difficult to identify the type of employee benefits that attract employees in different geographical locations. Offshore employment agencies have been a huge help to employers who needed strategic advice about revising their employee benefits.
Employee benefits play a significant role in the recruitment process and in attracting talent. Find out how.
Employee Benefits And its Role in Recruitment
1.Improves Employer Branding
Branding is about how you would like to be perceived by your existing and potential talent pools. Are you known as an employer that has a very dull workplace culture and a tendency to enforce pay cuts and layoffs? Would you like to be known as an employer that offers employee benefits that would rarely be enjoyed by employees?
To improve your employer brand as an organization that is supportive to employees and understands their current struggles with life, health, family health, and safety, etc., you would need to revise your employee benefits. Understand what kinds of benefits make more sense to your employees depending on their demographic grouping and common issues. If you are recruiting from offshore locations, taking advantage of the consultancy services provided by offshore employment agencies could give you the right insights.
2. Attracts Talent
Efficiency and high performance at work require the best talent. The talent pool is large, but the competition is rife for hiring professionals with expertise, experience, and great skill sets. By adopting employee benefit and support policies which are more relevant and widely appreciated, you will have an upper edge in attracting brilliant talent and improving operational efficiency.
3.Increases Trust in the Company
Of all the significant advantages an employer can ever have, is to have their employees’ trust. But trust is built and needs to be worked on, and organizations may find it hard to do so in the wake of the global pandemic that is not showing any signs of subsiding.
Through relevant and meaningful employee benefits, after understanding the current trends, you could attract and retain better remote and permanent employees.
4. Enhances Employee Retention
Treat your employees well, and you will have them for a long time. The reverse is also true. The absence of reasonable allowances and benefits to your employees leads to higher cases of absenteeism, absconding employees, and attrition.
With the right employee benefits package that is aligned with the trends in 2021, you will be able to attract and retain employees.
Employee Benefits Trends for Improved Recruitment and Employee Retention in 2021
Having looked at the advantages an organization gets by extending the right set of benefits to their employees, let’s look at the new employee benefits trends adopted in 2021.
1. Emergency Saving Funds
All organizations have felt the impact of the coronavirus in the year 2021, and therefore emergencies are at the climax and can affect anyone. Organizations offering emergency savings fund schemes or support benefits are finding it easy to impress their existing employees, win their loyalty and attract a better workforce.
You could take the advice of onshore and offshore employment agencies to frame the right benefits package for your onshore and offshore teams.
2. Remote Work Support
The pandemic is here; lives are being lost at an alarming rate, yet business has to continue—thumbs up to organizations that already have set up home-based employment to protect their employees.
Not all organizations are, however, keen to offer remote work support. When these organizations try to recruit manpower for new projects or expansions, they find very little opportunity for attracting worthy professionals. On the other hand, companies that are allowing employees to take to working from home or remote work are able to attract the right talent with ease.
3. Enhanced Flexible Working
Home-based employment is not exactly a paradise arrangement for employees. Many challenges arise particularly in the current scenarios. Organizations can make life simpler and enjoyable for employees by offering a flexible working benefit.
What this implies is that employees can get the option of not following the general working hours but flexible working hours as and when they face emergencies at home or need to take care of an ailing family member. They are provided with the right resources to enable hassle-free home-based employment scenarios.
4. Child Support and Family-friendly Policies
As the pandemic continues to wreak havoc on the routine human life patterns, and with children and elderly parents to take care of, individuals have to make decisions that suit their personal life scenarios. This leads to increased time-offs, absenteeism, long paid or unpaid leaves, etc.
With benefits that support child care or caregiver responsibilities of employees, you allow them to be free of the many worries that are affecting their work life. The results are you get better employee availability, productivity, and performance.
5. Health Insurance
Much more than any other benefit in 2021 is the health benefit that is the need of the hour. A must-have for organizations that look to retain their employees and improve their motivation to work with the company. The health insurance benefit will act as a strong tool to attract potential candidates to working with you and winning the loyalty of existing employees.
6. Caregiver and Paid Time Off
During the pandemic, a large number of female employees had to resign from their jobs as the role of caregiver is mostly understood to be their responsibility in most families across the world. Many male employees too across organizations had to take the decision to leave their jobs or go on long unpaid leave.
Many companies faced with such loss of talent and wide skill gap issues started to offer the caregiver and paid time off benefits, and it paid off well.
7. Extended Well-Being Support
If their well-being is not catered for, employees will always have a hard time focusing on their work, bringing down their performance. Organizations that have maintained a high profile have this benefit extended. It is about monetary and non-monetary support that is conducive to the health and safety of employees. Consultants at a professional employment agency could assist you in identifying if well-being support is a much sought after employee benefit in your sector or not.
8. Mental Health Support
With the rampant deaths and extreme situations faced by individuals in 2020 and 2021, the difficulties increasing manifold for a lot of working professionals, they are unable to keep up with the work-life. Mental health issues like high-stress levels, anxiety, nervous or panic attacks are on an unprecedented rise. That is one of the reasons the inclusion of mental health support benefits is on the rise. Free counseling sessions, psychiatric help, short paid leaves, etc., are some of the offers included in the mental health support packages. You could also consult with a professional employment agency to find out what kind of employee benefit offers are most asked for in your sector.
9. Student Loan Repayment Benefit
As many companies in several sectors such as IT, ITeS, BPO, KPO, financial services, engineering technology, etc., are hiring professionals who are continuing their university education or postgraduate studies. Employee benefits such as student loan repayment are starting to gain popularity in these sectors.
Alliance Recruitment Agency
Alliance Recruitment Agency has helped numerous organizations improve their manpower policies, increase retention rates, and enhance hiring outcomes. Our recruiters have enabled clients to implement successful home-based employment and offshore teams. We are highly trusted by our clients as a professional employment agency and over the many offshore employment agencies, they have worked with.
Enhance your employer brand and increase your capacities to harness the right talent through the right set of employee benefits! Connect with us to know how you could frame the right employee benefits package and enhance hiring success!
