Hospitality managers know they are in a highly competitive sector. After all, with the touch of a few keystrokes, potential customers will decide to either visit a property or choose another. How can companies in this industry maintain a competitive edge?

Hotel news site 4hoteliers.com lists “achieve operational excellence” as one of four keys to a competitive hospitality strategy. They go on to explain, “Satisfactory service is not good enough with today’s fickle consumer; great service is now required, so providing ‘unanticipated’ or ‘wow’ service is a must".

With that said, no other industry relies more heavily on its staff to set it apart from other competitors. And no other factor contributes to employee satisfaction more than an effective benefits package. In fact, 76 percent of employees say they’d be at least somewhat likely to accept a job with a more robust benefits package, but lower compensation. So how can your firm craft a benefits package that attracts top talent and retains it?

Consider these three tips:

(Editors Note - this blog post is an excerpt from our recently published white paper on the same topic. You can download a FREE copy of that white paper simply by clicking here.)

1. Research and Benchmark

Designing a great benefits package requires effort and digging. It's important to research industry best practices and survey your own employees. Create a strategy for departing employees that asks why they are leaving and coaxes the real, underlying reasons.

A 2014 statistical survey of hotel employees found that only 4.4 percent of hotel hourly employees stayed with their employers for ten years or more. Find out why your employees are leaving, and work to combat those reasons. Additionally, benchmark benefits packages by researching your direct competitors, as well as other companies outside your industry yet in the same region.

As an employee benefits broker, we immerse ourselves in health care issues every day. After all, it’s part of our mission to ensure our clients’ employees and their dependents get access to outstanding health care resources. 

Yet our reach in this regard only extends so far. For the unemployed and under-employed, employer-sponsored health care simply isn’t an option. And for some, not even the marketplace exchanges and other government-provided relief programs make their way to the youth of this country. 

That’s why, as long time supporters of underprivileged children’s charities, it gives us great pride to lend our support to The Hope Association and their Run for Hope initiative. Their mission is to build and operate two mobile health clinics to serve underprivileged children in the Washington, DC and Los Angeles metro areas, with possible expansion to other cities thereafter. 

Whenever an employer offers a group health plan, it's imperative to properly administer all of the health plan notices required under the DOL, PPACA, ERISA, COBRA and HIPAA. Failure to comply with these directives can lead to costly penalties.

So when it comes to your employee benefits communications this open enrollment season, how confident are you in providing your employees (and their dependents) with all of these legally-required notices in the time and manner in which the law specifies?

Savvy employers can generally minimize both the administrative burden and cost of sending these notices by simply including them with the health plan enrollment materials they distribute each year. Although yearly distribution is not required for most federally mandated health plan notices, employers should consider including some of them with enrollment materials anyway. Doing so may cure any previous failure to give the notice, and it demonstrates an employer’s good faith effort to apprise plan participants of their rights.

Here is a rundown of the notices you might wish to include in your open enrollment communication efforts. Note that these notices, in general, apply to all types of group health plans, including both fully-insured and self-funded group health insurance plans. That said, some of the requirements vary by the type of health plan offered as well as the size of your company.

The Birth of Labor Day

As experts in the field of employee benefits, it seems only fitting that we share with the curious the origins of Labor Day, most especially as we enter this holiday weekend. Labor Day is, after all, a celebration of the American labor movement and is dedicated to the social and economic achievements of workers.

We have President Grover Cleveland to thank for the getting the first Monday of September as a holiday every year. Several factions lobbied for the holiday to be on May 1st, to link up with International Worker’s Day, which is celebrated in over 80 countries worldwide. But for President Cleveland, May 1st was too close to the date of Chicago’s Haymarket Massacre, which occurred on May 4th, 1886.

Having a "pets at work" policy is a simple program to implement that can also boost employee morale. Allowing pets in the workplace works particularly well when your employees are passionate about their pets. It's a low-cost perk for human resources to implement, with the added benefit that it can actually improve employee retention.

As reported in Fortune Magazine recently, having Spot as your coworker is quickly replacing foosball in popularity among Millennials: "In a recent survey by social meeting site Skout, more than half of all employees (51%), and 58% of those under age 30, said that dogs in the office make a company 'a cool place to work' — three times the number who said the same about ping pong or foosball tables."

Why Not Make Your Office Pet-Friendly?

People love their pets as a source of inspiration and comfort, but the bond that develops between a pet and an owner gets disrupted every work week for a good portion of the day. Being able to spend time with pets for only brief periods during the early morning or at night can be stressful for both the pet and the owner. That's why having them in the office can help ease separation anxiety for pets, while improving workplace morale for the owner.

Having pets around really seems to bring a more relaxed energy to the atmosphere of the office. Dogs and cats make things more enjoyable for people in all sorts of settings, and offices are no exception. There are also some people who don't have pets but love to be around them. Therefore, this policy can even be a perk for those you never thought of as animal lovers.

Do a Google search for recruitment and retention strategies for the Native American workforce, and you'll quickly find your research comes up short. Making up less than two percent of the workforce, this overlooked demographic suffers from unemployment rates double that of national averages.

According to U.S. News and World Report, their labor force participation rate is 61.6 percent, the lowest for all race groups. However, the reality is that Native Americans not only provide a larger workforce pool in the areas where populations are concentrated, but they bring a unique diversity unparalleled by any other group.

Many have learned to balance their tribal world with American culture. Those seeking higher education are often first in their family to do so, displaying a determination and work ethnic that would be an asset to any organization.

How can you successfully recruit and retain top Native American candidates? Below are three important employee benefit considerations for the Native American workforce.

If you think private healthcare exchanges are the cutting-edge solution to rising healthcare costs, think again. In reality, they are essentially a clone of the cafeteria-style benefit plans that date back to the 1970s. The main difference is the technology used to select and implement employee benefits.

Simply put, here's how a private exchange works: employers or exchange sponsors offer a package of coverage choices, define a contribution amount that acts as the employee's budget, and the employee selects how to allocate their budget dollars.

This basic process may seem like the answer to today's healthcare woes for both employees and employers. However, there are some important realities employers need to know about when it comes to providing healthcare through a private exchange. 

The face of the American workforce is changing. Thanks to comparatively higher fertility rates and increased immigration, Hispanics have nearly doubled their representation in the labor force over the past fifteen years. By 2050, Hispanics are predicted to make up as much as 30 percent of the American workforce. That means it's more critical than ever before that employers pay attention to the needs of their Hispanic employees when crafting their employee benefits packages. 

Better alignment between your benefits and your Hispanic workforce doesn't just benefit them; 63% of Latino employees give serious consideration to their benefits package when rating their job satisfaction. And as goes job satisfaction, so goes recruitment, retention, and employee engagement. By providing all your employees with a satisfactory benefits package, you can help ensure that your business runs at peak efficiency.

So does your industry employ a large percentage of Hispanic workers? Here are several ideas for improving your approach to benefits with this key demographic. 

Wellness programs have been around for decades, and their benefits are well-documented. Research shows they are responsible for a 28 percent reduction in sick days, a 26 percent reduction in health costs, and a 30 percent decrease in workers' compensation and disability management claims. If designed well (e.g. based on population health analytics, etc.), companies can potentially save $5.93 for every dollar invested.

Wellness initiatives and contests have been taken to a new level in recent years, with the emergence of wearable fitness trackers. On the surface, it seems that these trackers would eliminate any tendency to exaggerate activity performance, compared to using manual logs. However, where there's a will, there's a way. The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) recently reported on wellness cheaters. What does cheating on workplace wellness contests say about the cheater?

We get many questions about how to increase employee engagement. While we believe that giving your workforce best-in-class HR benefits is one of the best ways to satisfy many workers, another way is to find ways to motivate workers who succeed better on a team.

As a manager, spend time looking for ways to help the team function as a whole. Use part of your time for planning positive activities, such as team-building and brainstorming sessions. You should also work to identify what makes groups of people function well together. In this post, we will examine three common issues with team performance that can reduce employee engagement: problems with communication, problems with goal setting, and personality conflicts.