With unemployment at record lows, hiring qualified employees has become increasingly difficult.  This makes retaining your good employees even more important.  Human resource studies have consistently found that the key to employee retention is not higher salaries, but rather better employee benefits.  This is still true today, but today’s employees look at benefits differently.  This in turn requires employers to keep up with these new employee expectations that extend beyond the traditional benefit offerings.

Offering affordable healthcare plans is still important, but there are other factors as well.  Since one plan will not fit everyone, offering a variety of benefit options was important to 80% of employees in a recent study.  Better education is also important so that employees better understood their benefits was found to increase retention in more than 75% of employees.  However, today’s employees want more than just better variety and education. They now want easier access to these benefits and more than half of employees are unsatisfied with current access.  An online benefits enrollment portal that can be accessed from home or mobile devices, as well as online access to benefit plans to look up in-network providers and track claims are very desirable.  A medical plan that offers online access to physicians as an alternative to office visits is also an increasingly important option. 

But today’s employee want more than just healthcare and many of these benefit needs are not being met.  Access to a 401(k) plan so they can start saving for retirement is very desirable employee benefit.  Employees also want employee benefits that help with their personal finances, mental wellbeing and work-life balance, three areas that recent research has found to be lacking with most companies.

These new challenges seem daunting for even a large company with the human resources expertise to address them, but for a small business they may seem like an impossible hurdle to overcome.  That is where Total Team Solutions can help.  In addition to providing payroll services, we provide a broad range of employee benefit service to our clients that include access to a variety of affordable healthcare options, a turnkey 401(k) plan and personal financial planning services for employees.  We provide an online enrollment portal and conduct annual employee benefit enrollment meetings to educate employees on all plans offered.  Our human resource experts are also available to develop customized policies and programs, including those focusing on a better work-life balance.  Total Team Solutions has been providing small businesses with this competitive edge for more than 30 years.  For more information on how we can help your small business check out our website at www.ttspro.com for contact John Morlock at 800-836-9678 or email him at jmorlock@ttspro.com.