What Is a Good Benefits Package in Today’s Jobs Market?
When you are hiring for finance jobs, you’ll have many considerations to make. What personality will fit best with your team? What qualifications and experience should they have? How should the hiring process flow? How much should you pay?
The best candidates will be encouraged to apply by many factors. These might include salary, opportunities to progress their careers, to achieve a better work/life balance, and so on.
One way in which candidates assess a job – at the pre-application stage and at the offer stage – is by examining the employee benefits. Candidates have rejected offers because the benefits package didn’t measure up to their expectations.
Are the benefits you provide helping or hindering your hiring?
Good Benefits Packages Help to Hire Talented Candidates
Some benefits are required by law. Others are optional. A good benefits package on top of a competitive salary should help to attract the most talented to your organization.
Among the most popular benefits are paid time off, flexible sick time, and good health insurance cover (including dental and optical). Benefits that are considered valuable are attractive to candidates. They can help to reduce your turnover rates, as well as saving money in hiring and training costs.
Good candidates will assess the value of your benefits package. They will consider what is useful to them, and how much they would pay to provide the same benefit from their salary. It is not unusual for a candidate to take a lower competing offer when it is also accompanied by a much more attractive benefits package.
When you offer a good benefits package, it also shows that you care about your staff. People talk about the ‘the company that took care of me’. They tell their friends and family about the great retirement package they have in place, or the exceptional paid vacation time each year. Each employee with a great benefits package has the power to become a great advocate for your organization as an employer – and this will help you attract more and higher-quality candidates.
In short, a great benefits package will help you attract and retain talented employees, reduce salary costs, and maintain a happy workforce.
The Cost of Below-Par Benefits
It costs money to offer good employee benefits. Maybe as much as 10% to 35% of salary. Health and life insurances, tuition reimbursements, and discount incentives aren’t cheap.
At some point in the recruitment process, the candidate will ask to see the full list of benefits offered. If your health plan doesn’t measure up to their current plan with their current employer, they will do the math. They’ll figure out how much it will cost them to replace what they are losing – and probably ask for a higher salary to compensate, or even decide to stay at with their current employer.
What Is a Good Benefits Package for Financial Jobs?
What do candidates expect? What do they want?
Popular benefits include:
- Health insurance
- Dental insurance
- Vision insurance
- Disability insurance
- Life insurance
- Paid time off (PTO)
- Retirement plan benefits
- Mental health benefits
- Professional development and education benefits
Another benefit that has exploded in popularity in recent years is flexible working arrangements. These might include the ability to choose working hours within a set structure and to work from home two or three days per week.
Other types of benefits might also include company-specific benefits. For example, a tourism company might offer discounts on its vacation deals, or a retail company might offer an employee card with automatic discounting on the goods its sells.
Another benefit that is gaining in popularity is student loan repayment programs.
The Bottom Line
When presented with a job offer, total compensation, including benefits, has always been important in a candidate’s decision-making process. Research by Prudential Financial shows just how much more focus there is on benefits in the post-pandemic era:
- 75% of people feel access to benefits through an employer is more important than ever
- 52% say that if better benefits were offered, they would move to another job
- 72% say that a good benefits package is a big part of why they stay in their job
In short, offering an attractive benefits package is crucial to effective hiring and retention. The question is, what is ‘an attractive benefits package’ in financial jobs?
In truth, there is no single, definitive answer, except that each candidate is unique with unique needs. It may not be so much a question of what benefits you offer, but which are the most attractive benefits to the individual candidate.
When we work with clients and candidates, we ensure that we understand how best the match can be made: including understanding what is most important to the candidate, and how the client’s benefits can help sell the offer to them.
To stay abreast of up-to-date recruitment information in accountancy and finance jobs, and find perfectly matched candidates for your vacant roles, contact 6 Degrees today.