Family work/life balance benefits a top priority for winning the war for talent in 2023

Your peers feel there’s a return on investment (ROI) for investing in family-friendly benefits that contribute to employees’ work/life balance. That’s according to an employer health and benefits strategies survey by Mercer.

In this case, “family-friendly” means perks designed to support employees who are building and nurturing a family, as well as employees who are caregivers for older family members.

It turns out the range of family-oriented benefits being offered by employers is rapidly expanding. As you might have suspected, it has much to do with the ongoing struggle with attracting and retaining talent brought on by the Great Resignation.

For many workers these days, an employer that isn’t interested in supporting their work/life balance isn’t worth their time. So you may want to consider whether adding these benefits will help to avoid the high costs of employee turnover and decreased productivity.

Work/life balance for parents

Conducted this spring with respondents from 708 organizations “from all industries and of all sizes,” the survey revealed that your peers are offering, or are planning to offer, benefits for parents that go above and beyond what’s required by FMLA:

• Paid parental leave, 70%
• Paid adoption leave, 50%
• Paid foster child leave, 33%
• Paid surrogacy leave, 27%, and
• Phased return-to-work for new parents, 12%.

Previously offered only by a small number of employer-sponsored health care plans, here’s what employers are doing, or planning to do, about family-building benefits:

• Offer an on-site lactation room for mothers, 77%
• Financial assistance for adoption, 38%
• Financial support for fertility treatment outside what’s offered in their health plan, 19%
• Concierge fertility service (enhanced support, typically with a dedicated specialist who works with a care team and the employee), 15%
• Surrogacy benefit (financial), 14%
• Breast milk shipping services for business travel, 13%, and
• Financial assistance for foster care, 8%.

And once those children are in the full-time care of your employees, they might appreciate:

• childcare referrals/consultations (30% of employers offering/planning to offer)
• access to backup childcare services (22% of employers offering/planning to offer)
• tutoring/educational support for children (17% of employers offering/planning to offer)
• subsidized childcare services (13% of employers offering/planning to offer)
• college coaching (12% of employers offering/planning to offer)
• support for special needs children (10% of employers offering/planning to offer)
• on-site child care (9% of employers offering/planning to offer), and
• childcare cost reimbursement for additional costs as a result of business travel, working late or working overtime (4% of employers offering/planning to offer)

Work/life balance for elder-care caregivers

Instead of caring for children under 18, your Baby Boomer and Gen X employees may have personal obligations related to the well-being of an aging parent or parents.

The Mercer survey participants said they were offering, or planning to offer:

• elder-care caregiver referrals/consultations, 34%
• elder-care provider and facility search assistance, 28%
• access to backup elder-care services, 19%, and
• elder-care caregiver leave, 13%.