How to Improve Employee Engagement with Benefits

If your workforce is more focused on where to go for lunch than achieving business results, that’s a problem. Many studies, including Paycor’s own People Management Report, confirm what we already know: Employee engagement is strongly connected to productivity, profitability and customer satisfaction.

It’s hard to argue that employee engagement is a bad thing. A recent Gallup survey compared businesses that ranked in the top 25% of employee engagement to those in the bottom quarter and found those in the top are 21% more profitable, 17% more productive, have 10% better customer ratings, experience 41% less absenteeism and suffer 70% fewer safety incidents.

Also, engaged employees are less likely to be actively searching for a new job. Employee turnover is expensive so it’s important to take whatever actions possible to avoid it.

So, what motivates engagement? There’s not one exact answer—it’s up to you to determine what works best for your employees. Recognition and acknowledgement for a job well done is a good starting point, but that’s just the tip of the iceberg. How can you make your team feel connected to the company?

Do you need to offer a better compensation package? Additional training and development opportunities? A flexible work environment? Yes, those offerings definitely can help with employee motivation, but a solid benefits program can also have a huge influence on your employees’ overall engagement.

Benefits can Impact Employee Engagement

Chances are, if the human resources team at an organization isn’t focused on engagement, no one else will be. There’s no magic bullet that guarantees engagement but providing a great benefits plan should be a significant part of your strategy. Start with the fact that there’s now five generations in the workforce—creating a benefits plan that suits a multi-generational staff is imperative to keep workers at every age interested and engaged.

What once were considered non-traditional benefits are becoming more mainstream. Flexible hours, working from home, on-site fitness classes and regular free lunches are benefits more employees come to expect.

Even the way an office is designed can benefit employees. A sedentary office lifestyle is not conducive to today’s emphasis on health and well-being. Instead, work environments with an activity-based floorplan that encourages employees to move around and choose a workstation that suits them are becoming more commonplace. It could be a walking treadmill or standing desk, it could be a spot on the couch next to a window—whatever it takes to foster productive work which leads to greater employee satisfaction and engagement.

A Benefits Administration Partner Can Help

As benefits enrollment and administration becomes increasingly complex it can prove to be complicated and frustrating for your HR staff and employees to understand. Remember, your goal is to keep your teams engaged, not make their work lives more difficult. Working with a provider who’s “been there, done that” can ease some of the stress.

First, it’s important to find ways to simplify everyone’s day-to-day processes and minimize time-consuming, manual tasks. Eliminating paper and moving benefits enrollment and administration online is key. Everyone wins when you streamline the entire HR, benefits and payroll process.

Second, empowering your workforce to maintain their personal and team information from anywhere with an internet connection is an additional way to improve engagement. Self-service options help improve employee satisfaction across the board.

Third, offering interactive decision and support tools can help educate your employees on their benefits options and even give them recommendations based on their individual needs. Take the guesswork out of benefit decisions by offering a personalized plan comparison that can help your employees feel more in control. Bonus (!) it also eliminates an enormous administrative burden from the HR benefits team.

At Paycor, we want to help you make a difference in your organization. Ready to attract top talent and create more strategic benefits plans? With the right technology and expertise, you can take your HR operations to the next level.

Source: ¹Society for Human Resource Management