Could your benefits be driving employees away?

Danger: Most companies are underestimating just how critical benefits are to their people. (Hint: It’s not all about how good your health care is.)

Jack up co-pays or change their doctor’s network and you’ll have no trouble seeing just how important benefits are to employees.

But guess what? Lots of the other benefits you offer – and even some you may not – are often just as important to whether an employee stays with your company for the long haul.

That’s the finding of dramatic new research by MetLife.

And it turns out, many of your peers are seriously misestimating just how much people care about certain offerings.

Check out what Met uncovered about the employer-employee benefits value gap …  and how you can use that info to keep your best people.

What you think they want vs. what they really value

So employers and employees are on the same page when it comes to the correlation between salaries and loyalty levels. And they’re pretty closely aligned when it comes to the value of healthcare benefits.

But then the divide creeps in. Many companies are woefully underestimating how important other types of benefits are to keeping their people happy (and on their payroll):

• 59% of employees believe retirement benefits are critical to employee loyalty, vs. just 42% of employers who thought so
• More than half (51%) of employees think non-medical benefits (dental, disability, vision and life) are critical to their employer loyalty, as compared to less than a third (32%) of employers who believed that to be the case.
• 40% of employees link a choice of voluntary benefits to their loyalty to you, vs. less than a quarter (24%) of employers.

Where to go from here

That will be a wake-up call for most companies. Considering how critical many of these offerings are to keeping your employees not only happy but loyal to your company, it’s worth making sure you’re offering the best benefits you can.

The best part?  You don’t necessarily have to pump any additional benefits into your benefits program.

In fact, the trend, according to MetLife is a more targeted benefits strategy so all your employees feel they’re getting the perks that are most important to them.

The three ways companies plan to do that in the next five years:

1. Offer more personalized benefits geared towards employees’ age groups.
2. Offer more personalized benefits geared towards individuals’ circumstances.
3. Offer a greater variety of benefits to choose from.

Info: To download the complete survey, click.