Design Tips

Intentional Plan Design (Benefit Tips ® - © 2014)

Have you ever wondered why small business owners spend their hard earned revenue on employee benefits? It’s because when benefit strategies are aligned to business strategies then easier to achieve business goals.

For example:

Aligning Benefit Strategies to Business Strategies
Business Strategy Benefit Strategy
Improve employee loyalty by developing a supportive corporate culture Demonstrating care and concern for employees and their families during their time of need
Maximize market share by improving customer experience Create a workforce advantage by attracting and retaining the best employees
Create a cost advantage with a productive workforce Reducing turnover, providing a smooth egress for disabled and aging employees

 

Once you understand the purpose of benefit you can turn your attention to which segments of your workforce to apply each strategy to. Some strategies will apply to all employees while others will focus on specific challenges unique to your organization and industry. Every detail of your benefit plan should map directly to a benefit strategy.

 

Permanent Seasonal Staff (Benefit Tips ® - © 2015)

Human Resource Challenge

It is time-consuming and expensive to recruit and train seasonal staff each time you anticipate a surge in business. Prefilling permanent seasonal positions with experienced staff would improve your quality and free you up to invest your time more strategically.

Opportunity

You can gain a labour market advantage by prefilling permanent seasonal positions. Rather than compete with your peer employers at the beginning of each busy season, simply offer an inexpensive benefit package to your best recruits at the end of their first season.

Cost

You can design your benefit plan at any price-point, but $50 per month during the first off-season and $100 or more monthly thereafter is common. Some employers base their employee retention budget on the cost of recruiting and training replacement staff.

Strategic Questions

  • Which seasonal positions require the most experience, trustworthy, motivated staff?
  • What percentage of seasonal positions do I want to prefill?
  • When do I know which staff I want to return next season?
  • What is the most cost-effective way to secure a commitment from my best seasonal staff to return season year?
  • How do my labour market competitors secure a commitment from their best staff to return next season?

 

More Articles ...

  1. Eligibility for Benefits