Posts

Employee Benefits: What You Should Know As An Employer

/in /by

StrategyDriven Talent Management Article |Employee Benefits|Employee Benefits: What You Should Know As An EmployerAs an employer, one of the smartest things you can do is offer employee benefits in the workplace. Some employee benefits are pretty self explanatory and should come as a standard – such as water, tea, and coffee. Your team shouldn’t have to bring in their own basic refreshments.

However, you should offer more than the bare minimum. You want your workplace to be set apart from others, and your benefits to be a little competitive at least. Benefits vary from company to company, but they can easily make your workplace a more pleasant place to work for your team. Below, we’ll go into more detail on employee benefits and what you should know as an employer:

The Types Of Benefits You Can Offer

There are all kinds of benefits you could offer as an employer. This may include:

  • Health insurance (required to be offered by larger companies)
  • Dental insurance
  • Vision care
  • Life insurance
  • Paid vacation leave
  • Personal leave
  • Sick leave
  • Fitness

There are many optional benefits, and many companies offer the above simply to stay competitive. Extra bonuses, such as stock options, can also be a nice addition.

Employee Retention

Many employers are deciding to increase the use of bonuses, perks, and incentives to recruit and retain employees. Making the workplace more comfortable with benefits can ensure employees stay loyal and stick around in the long term. While you need to stick to a budget and you can’t be frivolous with spending, having benefits, bonuses, and perks that keep your employees happy will ensure more productivity, higher quality work, a more pleasant work environment, and more.

Creating A Nice Work Environment

While the benefits can help to contribute to a nicer work environment, they’re not going to do all of the work for you. Having Payroll HR in place will ensure your employees are paid on time and that everything is kept above board, which should be another concern of yours.

Setting Up Flexible Spending Accounts

Many employers set up flexible spending accounts, and these accounts are regulated by the government. The accounts allow you to set aside pretax dollars, and these dollars pay for things like daycare and medical expenses. They will decrease your taxable income as well as give more freedom to your team, so you should take advantage of one if possible.

Caring About Your Employees

Of course, providing benefits gives you the opportunity to actually make things better for your employees. The benefits should come from a genuine place of wanting to help them and caring for their wellbeing. An employer that shows they care will always stand out from the rest, and your team will be far more likely to stay loyal to you. Even offering things like verbal praise and support can go a long way to making the work environment nicer for them and encouraging them to keep going.

Many employee benefits are not compulsory, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t offer them. Wanting the best for your employees will go a long way. And that includes oral care for your employees with reputable dentists like the Dentist In Grand Blanc.

Departmental Culture Tribes Can Be Great Motivators

/in /by

StrategyDriven Corporate Cultures Article |Departmental Culture|Departmental Culture Tribes Can Be Great MotivatorsDepartmental cultures are a big thing and always have been. The strange thing is, they don’t often get talked about openly among leaders in public. However, they are talked about and encouraged behind closed doors. It’s kind of like the armed forces. The best generals all throughout history, have fanned the flames of internal rivalries in their units. If you don’t have departments vying to be better than each other, how will their fare when it comes to trying to beat the competition? Hence why good business leaders will always encourage their workforce to have cultures that symbolize their skills, abilities, and way of doing things. Department cultures can be extremely motivating, becomes a brotherhood can develop among peers who are in the same company, the same department, have the same background and are trying to achieve the same goals.

Why they exist

Departmental cultures exist because we all come from different backgrounds. The marketing professionals in your business, don’t think the same as the risk department. Although they’re on the same team, they talk differently, use specific language and if you really get down to the human psyche, they even dress in a similar fashion. The reason why departmental cultures exist is that we all come from different houses or schools. The school of economic thought is very different from the school of design. It’s kind of like a task force mentality. You’re all going to work better when you feel like you belong. And not just having but being a part of their specific culture helps many employees feel like they are in the right place.

Marking their patch

You don’t want your departments to set up boundaries because you’re all on the same team at the end of the day. But you do want to create ‘checkpoints’. These are not physical barriers or borders, but they’re subtle hints that you’ve entered a different part of town. For example, the spaces that you have allocated to your departments in the office, should have their own distinct vibe and look. You can stick custom made morale patches around the room where the different departments begin and end. For example, a custom patch might be of an artist that the design employees look up to. For the risk department, you might have an owl because they watch over everything. You might also want to have a flag of a nation that represents the department such as the sales department for your Asian partners, etc. These small things add up to the culture in a big way.

Showcase cross-departmental skills

Departments can work together to solve problems. In fact, in modern-day business, they have to. But you can encourage this further by playing a solving game. For example, the marketing team has a project for which they don’t know the risk. The risk department can work with them to analyze their specific goals and give them solutions as to what is possible. It can be completely made up scenarios, but when your employees are together in the room, they can see how each other work.

Departmental culture is vital to the life and soul of your business. Every employee should feel as if they belong. Not just in the wider business, but in a department that they can call home.