Employee Benefits Blog

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.

Health insurance is the #1 employee benefit. According to the US Department of Labor, health insurance makes up the largest share of non-cash benefits received by private industry workers. Fast Company lists health insurance as #1 on its list of "Top 5 Employee Benefits".

Adding value through an employee health plan might just be the competitive edge your company needs to attract and retain top talent. A benefits broker who understands your company, industry, workforce demographics, AND geographic region can help do just that.

Here's how:

Healthcare: A Love/Hate Relationship

While healthcare is indeed a critical benefit, it's also a critical area of concern. A recent survey from Reuters found that healthcare is the top concern in the upcoming election, with 62 percent from both parties saying they want to know what their candidate plans to do about rising healthcare costs.

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.

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.

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. 

Americans are concerned about the future of their health care system—and for good reason. It's projected that we will spend 4.5 trillion dollars on health care in 2019 and five trillion by 2022.

According to a recent study from the Society for Human Resource Management, 79 percent of employers that provide health insurance are "very concerned" about rising health care costs. HR professionals know health care concerns go well beyond the effects on the organization's bottom line. Health care benefits play a critical role in recruitment, retention, employee morale, and productivity.

Internet-based virtual doctor visits and telemedicine health services are increasingly gaining acceptance among consumers. Just witness yesterday's $125MM acquisition of Scottsdale, AZ-based HealthiestYou by Teladoc as proof. In fact, it's estimated that there will soon be more than one million patients worldwide seeking online doctors instead of using traditional hospital visits.

This hard to ignore growth could place further pressure on doctors to update their health IT infrastructure and allow them to compete in the online medical space. Online doctors could help alleviate the cost of healthcare and improve the affordability of providing healthcare-related employee benefits. Many patients are opting for more informal online video meetings with their doctors in order to fit a doctor’s “visit” into their busy schedules.

Yes, this is the land of opportunity. However, a recent report from research firm Glassdoor found that employee benefits for Americans lag far behind their European counterparts. Researchers compared paid paternity and maternity leave, general paternal leave, paid holidays, paid sick leave, and unemployment benefits across 14 countries. While countries like Sweden, Finland, France, and the UK took the prize in numerous categories, the U.S. failed to shine in any of the areas analyzed.

Why should we care how U.S. employee benefits compare to other countries? It's doubtful your employees will move to another country just to get more paid time off. However, this trend is significant for U.S. companies looking to retain their talent. Here's why.

Suffering a net loss of over two million jobs in the past decade, the construction industry is still reeling from the aftereffects of the recession. Despite being in the midst of a steady and prolonged recovery (the number of construction jobs is expected to grow 19 percent through the year 2018, compared with 11 percent growth projected for all industries combined), a new generation of workers has sadly not yet embraced the industry as an option that affords exciting and viable career paths.

With turnover in the construction industry already about twice the national average, and increasing as the economy returns to full employment, construction owners need to retain their most valuable assets and one of their most important competitive advantages in the marketplace – their people.

Unlike other sectors reliant on technology-driven productivity, construction depends heavily on its skilled workforce for growth and profitability. With 68 percent of construction companies employing less than five people, keeping highly skilled employees is key to the success of these small businesses.