How to attract employees with benefits

Have the right employee benefits package

This isn’t just important for your current staff but your future candidates too. Aligning your employee benefits with your recruitment strategy is key.

So, consider how you recruit and who your ideal candidates are. What are their needs, wants and what common behaviours do they share? And how can employee benefits support these?

Let’s look at an example. You’re a web development agency and you’re looking for talented new web developers to expand your team. Do your ideal candidates typically have their own personal projects?

The Technology Scheme could help make computer hardware more affordable to support with this. “We can help make your personal projects more affordable” could be a big selling point in your job adverts!

Equally, think about your perks and how they can support this. Companies like Google have a 20% time policy where their staff are encouraged to take 20% of their time each week to work on their own personal projects.

If your benefits and perks are aligned with the needs and wants of your most talented candidates your benefits will play an even bigger part in attracting them to your company.

Equally, you might consider the demographic of your potential candidates and how employee benefits can support them in this instance too.

For example, do you recruit specifically in the local area and require staff to commute to the workplace? The Bike to Work scheme could be a big motivating factor in talented candidates choosing to join your business.

It could be particularly persuasive if your candidates are looking to cut their carbon emissions output or get fit too.

Carefully consider the needs, wants, behaviours and demographics of your top candidates as well as your current team and consider how employee benefits can support these!

 

Boost your job adverts

According to PageGroup, only 47% of job adverts include any information about the benefits on offer.

Once you’ve got the right benefits for your staff and your candidates, you’ll want to shout about them! It sounds quite simple, but a lot of job adverts miss this out.

However, don’t just list your benefits like any other job ad. Make the link for candidates. Showcase not just your employee benefits but how they can benefit that candidate if they join you and how those benefits have supported your current team.

Include real-life examples of how your employee benefits have made a genuine difference to the lives of your staff and how you’ve invested the time and effort to make your benefits the best in the business.

Include your benefits higher up the job ad too. Make them more visible and more prominent as part of your Employee Value Proposition.

It’s one thing to talk about what you’re looking for from the ideal prospect but it’s another to state what you can do for them too.

 

Utilise social media

If you don’t already, it could be worthwhile to set up social media profiles dedicated to careers at your company if recruitment and retention is a high priority for your business.

Again, consider the demographic of your ideal candidates. Consider your employer brand and the needs, wants and behaviours of your candidates and your current team.

Consider these things when deciding what content to post and which channels to utilise.

According to The London School of Economics and Political Science, 90% of Instagram users are under the age of 35.

If the average age of your team is low and you hire lots of graduates, Instagram could be the perfect channel for your employer brand.

Equally, many businesses have a team of mixed demographics and so you might decide on using many different channels but tailoring your messaging to the audience of each one separately.

How does this help you attract employees with benefits? Social media could be the perfect platform for you to showcase how your employee benefits have made a genuine difference to the lives of your team.

This could be in the form of videos, infographics and even quotes from your team showing how your employee benefits have helped make a difference or make their paycheque go further.

 

Personalise with flexible benefits

Personalising your employee benefits is becoming ever more important, as is ensuring all your team benefit as equally as possible from your employee benefits.

Having a wide range of benefits and using a flexible benefits system to help staff tailor their benefits package to them is an increasingly important way to achieve this!

Through flexible benefits, employees can allocate their flexible benefits allowance to the benefits that have the most value to them. This way, your team are more likely to gain equal advantage from your benefits package.

When it comes to attracting employees with benefits, this shows candidates that not only do you have a benefits package that they’re much more likely to gain benefits from, but that you’ve made the time and investment to ensure this!

Again, remember to promote this through your job adverts and through your employer branded social media if possible.

Discover our flex benefits technology to find out more or get in touch to find out how we can make implementing a flexible benefits system quick, easy and effective for your business.

 

Combine employee benefits with an employee referral scheme

To attract top talent in a competitive job market often requires some thinking outside the box.

We’ve worked with clients before to combine different areas of their employee benefits and reward schemes to create completely unique and effective solutions to common HR problems.

In this case, combining your employee benefits with an employee referral scheme could be the unorthodox solution you need.

For example, you could reward your team with Instant Employee Discount vouchers to spend through their employee benefits platform if they successfully refer a new hire to you.

Alternatively, you could offer the same reward to new recruits who sail through their initial probationary period.

You could even take this one step further and reward an employee with flexible benefits allowance to use on whichever employee benefits they wish should they successfully refer a new team member.

Employee benefits technology will help you do this seamlessly, with minimal admin and maximum effect.

Attracting employees with benefits is a multi-step process. It starts with ensuring your benefits meet the wants and needs of your team and your candidates and is followed by effective communication of how your benefits have supported your team and how they can benefit your candidates.

The advantages of this are an increased competitive advantage in attracting your ideal candidates and improved employee retention, making the recruitment process easier and more effective and helping support the building of a strong team for your business!

There are lots of different factors that play a part in this, but employee benefits are certainly hugely important!

We’ve worked with businesses of all shapes and sizes to deliver employee benefits packages that meet their exact requirements and help deliver their KPI’s. For more information, get in touch and we’ll set you up with a free demo of our market leading employee benefits platform Salary Extras.