In 2018, companies increased benefit offerings 200%¹ with a focus on health-related, wellness, professional and career development, and flexible working benefits. And for good reason - the job market is candidate-driven.  The three most in-demand employee benefits of 2018 were those that satisfied work-life balance including flexible hours, education savings, and professional development.

The talent market is not fickle.  It's evolving.  A workforce of five generations.  How can you meet all their different benefit needs?   How can you do it in a way that enables you to build the kind of teams you need; people with different experience and expertise that drives your business forward?

In PwC’s most recent Annual Global CEO Survey², nearly 80% of U.S. CEO's worry about the availability of key talent with the right skills.  Workers with the right skills are hard to find and difficult to keep.

The reality is YOU are trying to please a multigeneration talent pool with diverse needs and demands.  The cost of not being able to build the teams you need is enormous.   A 2018 Hays salary survey³ found that 92 percent of companies experienced higher turnover and lower productivity due to an inability to hire skilled employees.  A Harvard Business Review⁴ report revealed, based on a survey of 323 corporate executives, that the inability of companies to find the right talent at the right time results in an inability to meet business goals (73%), increased vacancy rates or positions left unfilled (57%), lowered margins or missed business objectives (47%), caused hiring freezes (41%) and increased overruns in workforce costs (33%).

This represents a significant opportunity (gap) for forward-thinking companies.  This is a time to differentiate and stand apart; an opportunity to understand and fulfill the needs of the market and gain a competitive advantage.

Your workforce is diverse, tech-savvy, and expect their individual needs to be met.  The employee benefit experience must be digital and on par with the everyday 24/7 “when I want it at my fingertips” experience they already know as a consumer.  The digital benefit experience is about using their health, wealth and well-being benefit accounts to maximize and optimize their healthcare dollars, and save for today and tomorrow.

They expect their information to be easily accessible and the experience to be intuitive.  Self-service is the norm and transparency is not optional.  It should be the same experience, consistent across all devices.  If it’s not, it may wreak havoc on your HR team and your top talent associates your organization as “old school”.  Forget about attracting.  Employees are 600%⁵ more likely to quit a “technology laggard” and join a digital workplace leader. 

First, can you appeal to a diverse multigeneration talent pool and workforce? Next, can you deliver an experience that is consistent, intuitive and digital in the benefits arena? Finally, it boils down to configurability; the ‘holy grail’ of this overall value proposition on how to Attract & Retain Key Talent in offering meaningful and valuable benefits that your talent expects.  Not configurability that takes three to six months (the current market standard), but immediate and instant, and leveraged in a way that gives you an immediate competitive advantage.  Make an offer in a day and get the people you want, when you need them, to build your teams.  In a MetLife report⁶ 76% of Millennials and 67% of Boomers agreed that benefits customization is important for employer loyalty. To attract a Millennial, Boomer or Xer, you need the ability create a custom benefit plan unique to their individual needs, and that requires instant configuration.  You already know this.  In fact, 50%⁷ of organizations, across all HR application areas, consider configuration and customization limitations the top issue they are facing, and 80% of employers⁸ agree providing a wide variety of benefits with customization improves recruiting and increases loyalty.

Truly having the breadth of benefit account offerings that enables you to satisfy any benefit need across all generations is critical to the “war on talent.”  It’s no longer just about basic health benefits…job seekers are interested in work-life balance.  A pursuit of wellness and wellbeing.  Staying fit financially too.   To be effective, instant configurability and an endless aisle of benefit account choices delivered in a single solution with on-demand access are the future of benefits!

Sources:

1. 2018 Society for Human Resource Management Employee Benefits Survey; March 2018 https://www.shrm.org/hr-today/trends-and-forecasting/research-and-surveys/pages/2018-employee-benefits.aspx

2. PwC, 2018 - https://www.pwc.com/gx/en/ceo-survey/2018/deep-dives/pwc-ceo-survey-talent.pdf

3. Hays, 2018 - https://www.hays.com/press-releases/hays-survey-shows-skills-shortage-will-challenge-us-employers%E2%80%99-ambitious-growth-plans-2104620

4. Visier, 2015 - https://www.visier.com/press-release/nearly-three-quarters-of-businesses-have-missed-objectives-due-to-inadequate-workforce-planning-harvard-business-review-analytic-services-report-reveals/; https://www.visier.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/Visier-HBR-AS-Tackling-Talent-Strategically.pdf

5. New Digital Workplace Divide – Unisys Corporation, June 2018 https://www.app5.unisys.com/library/cmsmail/Digital%20Divide/GlobalReport_FINAL_printable.pdf , https://www.unisys.com/digitalworkplacedivide

6. MetLife’s 15th Annual U.S. Employee Benefits Trends Study; April 2017  https://www.metlife.com/about-us/newsroom/2017/april/demographic-shifts-employee-expectations-are-redefining-the-workplace/ & https://www.shrm.org/resourcesandtools/hr-topics/benefits/pages/retention-top-benefits-objective.aspx

7. Sierra Cedar, 2018 https://tinyurl.com/sierracedar18

8. MetLife’s 15th Annual U.S. Employee Benefits Trends Study; April 2017  https://www.metlife.com/about-us/newsroom/2017/april/demographic-shifts-employee-expectations-are-redefining-the-workplace/ & https://www.shrm.org/resourcesandtools/hr-topics/benefits/pages/retention-top-benefits-objective.aspx