The short answer for most employers is yes. The longer answer is that there are some circumstances when it makes sense to reduce employee compensation to avert even harsher cost-cutting measures, but only temporarily and only after you’ve considered all the possible unintended consequences that come with cutting pay.

When It’s Okay for an Employer to Cut Pay?

Pay cuts should not be an answer to a short-term drop in profits. Nor do they make sense in the face of an unavoidable long-term downturn in your business. Your organizational strategy should account for short-term cashflow challenges. Longer term sales challenges are better addressed through staff reductions or a shift in strategy.

However, cutting wages temporarily may be the appropriate answer to prevent severe losses from adversely affecting your company’s viability — but only if the alternative is layoffs or going out of business.

How do you know when to consider cutting employee pay? First, calculate your current staffing costs and then, based on revenue forecasts, determine whether you can withstand expected losses and still maintain your current payroll. If honoring your current compensation levels means you might need to let staff go, then it may make sense to see if you can maintain your current staff levels at slightly decreased wages.

If you think a temporary decrease in compensation costs might help you keep your doors open, then it’s time to create a plan for how to communicate and implement pay cuts.

Legal Considerations

If your workers are part of a collective bargaining agreement or working under the provisions of a contract, you may be prohibited from cutting pay, hours, or benefits. Doing so could incur penalties or make you vulnerable to a lawsuit or other legal action.

However, most employees are at-will, which means that the employer, or the employee, can end or alter the relationship at any point for almost any reason. So, technically, if you do not have an existing contract with a unionized workforce, you can reduce your employees’ compensation — wages, benefits, and performance-based incentives — if you adhere to the following conditions:

• You announce the pay cut before you implement it. Keep in mind that the amount of notification required differs by state.
• You do not make the reduction retroactively.
• You do not reduce earnings of hourly employees below the national minimum wage or your state’s minimum wage.
• You do not exempt workers’ salaries below the federal or state threshold below which they would need to be redefined as hourly wage workers.
• You do not reduce salaries in a discriminatory manner based on a worker’s protected status, such as race, gender, or disability, or implement wage reductions in a way that exacerbates existing diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) issues.
• You are not cutting pay as a punishment for taking time off to perform protected activities, such as jury duty, taking family leave, or military service.
• You are not retaliating against an employee for whistleblowing, organizing a collective bargaining unit, or acting as an employee representative for union.
• You give each employee the opportunity to agree to the reduction or resign.

Why Employee Pay Cuts Are Not Usually the Answer

In most cases, pay reductions are not a long-term solution to profit loss or poor performance, as they tend to:

• Negatively affect morale, decrease productivity, and further depress profits.
• Erode trust between workers and management.
• Prompt your best performers to look elsewhere for opportunities, possibly to your competition.
• Damage your employer brand and company culture.

The Problem With Across-the-Board Pay Cuts

Your business plan should be flexible enough to withstand a short-term dip in profits without necessitating layoffs or pay cuts. If your instinct is to cut compensation whenever times are tough, the message your frontline workers will take away is that they — rather than owners and top-level management — are the only ones making sacrifices for the benefit of the business’s overall health.

The Problem With Targeted Pay Cuts

You want your workplace to be a place where hard workers can thrive. Reducing pay communicates that your financial situation is unstable or that struggling employees will be penalized rather than supported. Either way, pay cuts are likely to cost you your highest achieving employees.

Offering support, upskilling, mentoring, and changing team and individual assignments are much better ways to improve the performance of an employee who is failing to reach their potential. If you have a problem employee who has very little chance of thriving in your company culture or your industry sector, or one who behaves in an unethical manner, termination is a better way to address the situation than a punitive pay cut.

If you decide to go forward with a targeted pay reduction it should be accompanied by a reduction in responsibilities or demotion. Asking an employee to do the same work for less pay is not likely to incentivize increased effort or performance.

How to Implement a Salary Reduction

As with a targeted pay cut to an individual employee, companywide pay cuts should be temporary and accompanied by a reduction in responsibilities. You should discuss the reductions with staff ahead of time and distribute a written announcement that outlines the terms of the compensation adjustment.

For example, you might keep base salaries at their current level but suspend bonuses. You may also want to specify that the reinstatement of previous compensation practices will be contingent upon a return to previous profitability levels or a change in economic conditions.

Cost-cutting Alternatives

Rather than implement wage reductions, consider offering your employees the following options that can help to temporarily — or even permanently — reduce payroll:

• Offer furloughs in the form of voluntary or mandatory time off during times that are less busy or that work well for each employee. Some employees may even welcome unpaid time off to focus on family obligations, educational opportunities, or extended vacations.
• Allow sabbaticals of various intervals, from a few months to a year, to pursue educational, volunteer, or other opportunities.
• Institute job sharing for employees who want to work part-time for the short term to fulfill caregiving obligations or pursue educational opportunities.
• Create a remote work policy to reduce overhead costs.

You may also want to consider filling critical openings with part-time or contract workers, at least for the duration of your current financial challenges.

How to Soften the Blow

If you are asking your workforce to sacrifice wages you should be prepared to offer something in return. You might focus on other aspects of your and more affordable incentives, such as making an extra effort to highlight workers’ performance, throwing an office party to thank people for their efforts, or working with community partners to provide gift certificates in lieu of cash bonuses for the near term.

You might also look to other non-monetary forms of compensation, such as increased paid time off (PTO) or offering top performers an equity stake in the company.

Learn More Ways to Reduce Costs Without Making a Pay Cut

Now that you know when an employer can cut employee pay, and how to temper the blow, learn about more ways to grow your bottom line, from crisis management to the latest hiring news and expert how-tos.

Legal disclaimer: None of the information provided herein constitutes legal advice on behalf of Monster.

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(Keep in mind that federal employees, some state employees, and eligible government contractors must pay for specific holidays. It’s also important to check your state’s laws because some states, such as Massachusetts and Rhode Island, require private employers to pay for holidays.)

If you have the option of providing paid holidays, these tips can help you set your policy. Like with any policy, it can be helpful to have an employment lawyer review it before you add it to your employee handbook.

Benefits of Offering Holiday Pay for Hourly Employees

Although you may not be required to pay salaried and hourly employees for holidays and vacations, many businesses do so to stay competitive. It can help you recruit and retain top talent and boost employee morale and engagement. Research shows that companies with high employee engagement often have higher profits because of factors including better productivity, work quality, customer loyalty, and employee retention.

Step 1: Determine Your Paid Holidays

Once you’ve decided to give holiday pay for hourly employees, your first step is to decide which holidays you’ll pay employees for even when they take the day off. For example, you may choose to pay employees for all the federal holidays or for the most common paid holidays. According to the compensation data resource Payscale, the most recognized paid holidays for private companies are:

1. New Year’s Day
2. Easter
3. Memorial Day
4. Independence Day
5. Labor Day
6. Thanksgiving
7. Day after Thanksgiving
8. Christmas

Many companies also give paid time off on Martin Luther King Jr. Day, Presidents’ Day, Veteran’s Day, Good Friday, Christmas Eve, and New Year’s Eve, per Payscale. Some companies offer “in lieu” of days when there’s a holiday over the weekend. For example, if a holiday falls on a Sunday, your employees would get a paid day off on Monday.

Step 2: Create a Process for Requesting Religious Holidays Off

Under Title VII of the Civil Right Act, employers are prohibited from discriminating against candidates and employees because of their religious beliefs. Employers must accommodate a candidate’s religious beliefs unless it would cause an “undue hardship” for the business, meaning it would be a “significant difficulty or expense.” While it’s likely you must give employees the day off for major religious holidays, you can decide whether you will still pay them for the day.

If you offer holiday pay for hourly employees, you may want to offer a certain number of “floating” holidays so employees can get paid for religious holidays that are important to them.

Step 3: Choose a Pay Model for Paid Holidays

If you decide to provide holiday pay for employees who take the day off, you’ll likely pay them their regular rate. However, you may want to pay employees more when they work on holidays. There are three common pay models:

• Regular rate. If you choose this model, you’d pay employees their regular hourly rate.
• Time-and-a-half. You’d pay employees their regular hourly rate and an additional half the amount. For example, if your employee’s hourly rate is $30, you’d pay them an extra $15 for the hour, amounting to $45 an hour.
• Double pay. You’d pay employees double their hourly rate. If they normally get $30 an hour, they’d be paid $60 an hour for working on a holiday.

Continue to Learn Hiring and Management Best Practices

Now you know the benefits of providing holiday pay for hourly employees and salaried employees and how to set your policy. Continue to strengthen your company with expert hiring and management advice from Monster.

Legal Disclaimer: None of the information provided herein constitutes legal advice on behalf of Monster.

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The United States doesn’t have a national paid parental leave policy for private businesses. The U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) enforces the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA), requiring private companies with at least 50 employees to provide job-protected, but unpaid, leave for three months. At a local level, just a few states mandate paid leave, so the decision is largely up to business owners.

If you’re considering offering this benefit, there are four steps to creating and implementing your policy:

1. Conduct market research
2. Determine what you can afford
3. Coordinate the logistics
4. Promote your policy

Here is more information about paid parental leave, how it can help your company, and best practices for developing your policy.

What is Paid Parental Leave?

Paid parental leave is an employee benefit that gives new parents job-protected time off to care for a newborn or newly adopted or fostered child. It is inclusive and provides leave for male, female, and non-binary parents and LGBTQ+, heterosexual, and single parents.

Some companies offer parental leave for bonding and maternity leave for mothers who give birth. The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) recommends that business owners avoid a potential discrimination claim by making it clear that they offer different leave for pregnant women and their partners, given the extraordinary demands of pregnancy and childbirth. They recommend that the bonding time, excluding time to recover from childbirth, be the same for all parents.

Additionally, childbirth recovery and certain pregnancy complications may count as qualifying events for short-term disability leave under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). Some states will pay the full base salary or a percentage. Check your state laws because you may be able to cover some or all maternity pay from state programs.

What are the Benefits of Offering Paid Leave?

Aside from the many benefits of giving employees paid parental leave, there are also advantages for business owners. Companies with paid leave are likely to have higher employee morale and engagement. These companies often financially outperform the competition because of increased quality of work, productivity, and employee retention.

Offering paid leave to all parents can help you recruit and retain top talent and show your commitment to building a diverse and inclusive team. Diverse and inclusive companies often have increased employee morale, engagement, and financial performance.

How Do You Create Your Company’s Policy?

You can implement these steps and best practices to set your company’s policy:

1. Conduct Market Research

If you haven’t already, start by reviewing the FMLA and your state’s parental leave policies to make sure your plan is compliant. Next, research what other companies in your industry offer so you create a policy that will help you attract and keep talent.

As with salaries, you might not be able to afford to offer the top range. However, you may be able to stay competitive by adding other family-friendly benefits like job sharing, a flexible work schedule, fertility benefits, remote work, backup childcare, and childcare stipends.

2. Determine What You Can Afford

Now determine how much time off you can afford to provide. Start by considering if you will pay your employees their full salary during paid parental leave or a percentage. If you pay a percentage, you may be able to offer a longer leave time for all of your employees.

As you’re estimating, take into consideration that you must provide health insurance during leave. It’s helpful to look at your organizational chart to determine whether you’d need to hire temporary workers for certain roles.

3. Coordinate the Logistics

After determining how much time off you can afford and whether you will offer full or partial pay and maternity and parental leave, consider other logistical details such as:

• Will you provide the same benefits for full-time and part-time employees?
• Do the benefits start on the first day of employment? If not, when do they begin?
• How far in advance should employees notify their manager and HR?
• Do employees need to provide any documentation?
• Do employees need to take the leave all at once, or can it be taken intermittently throughout the first year?
• If leave is taken intermittently are there any guidelines, such as requesting an extended leave time in advance so managers can plan accordingly?
• Will you offer different benefits based on the state or country where the employee lives?

Consider having an employment lawyer review your plan before you formalize it.

4. Promote Your Policy

After finalizing your paid parental leave benefit, you’re ready to add it to your employee handbook and tell your team. If you decide to offer paid maternity leave and paid parental leave, create two separate policies in your handbook. You may want to include the goal, eligibility criteria, duration and guidelines, and the request process.

Promote your policy by announcing it at your next all-team meeting. Some employees may be reluctant to take leave because they think it will keep them from getting promoted as quickly and that it will imply that they are “less committed” to their jobs.

You may be able to increase the number of employees who take leave by showing your support for the policy and encouraging leaders to take parental leave. Additionally, make sure that employees aren’t judged or penalized for taking leave.

Attract candidates by including a brief overview of your benefits on your company’s “career” page and in job descriptions. Make sure recruiters and hiring managers know the details if candidates ask during the interview process.

Continue to Improve Your HR Policies

You’ve learned exactly how to create a paid parental leave policy that will help you recruit and retain talent, improve employee morale and engagement, and strengthen your company culture. Keep implementing policies that can make your business more successful. Sign up to receive expert HR advice, news, and data from Monster.

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Despite the high demand, not many companies offer these benefits. The survey found that just 12 percent of the employees had fertility-specific benefits through work and 31 percent had some coverage through their employer’s health insurance plan.

You can provide these benefits for your employees without spending a considerable amount more on insurance. An overwhelming 97 percent of employers found that it did not cause a “significant increase” in their plan costs, per another National Infertility Association survey.

Here are some of the most common employee benefits related to fertility and family planning, why you should offer them, and how to best implement them at your company.

Common Fertility Benefits

If you offer these benefits, your health insurance plan or specialized insurance plan will cover some or all the common methods of family planning, including:

• Fertility drugs: Fertility medications like Clomid and injectable hormones can be expensive and are required for some of the family planning procedures, adding to the cost. Your plan may cover a portion of the medication costs.
• Egg, sperm, and embryo freezing: These fertility preservation procedures allow people to save eggs, sperm, or embryos to use in the future.
• IVF: With this procedure, egg and sperm are fertilized in a lab and the embryo is implanted in a person’s womb. It can be done with donor egg and sperm, making it an option for single and LGBTQ people. It’s an expensive process so it is valuable to have IVF benefits.
• Intrauterine insemination (IUI): For this method, sperm is washed and concentrated and implanted into a woman’s uterus around the time that she is ovulating. This procedure can be done with donor sperm.
• Donor egg or sperm: Some insurance plans will cover the cost of purchasing donated egg or sperm.
• Adoption: Some employers offer separate adoption benefits to cover costs including legal expenses and adoption fees and many companies allow their employees to take parental leave after adopting a child.
• Surrogacy: With surrogacy, someone else physically carries the baby. It is an option for LGBTQ+ people, single parents, and people who are unable to get pregnant or carry a baby through a pregnancy.

The Advantages of Offering Fertility Benefits

Offering these benefits can help you strengthen your company culture and performance. For example, it can:

Improve Employee Morale

Assisted reproductive technology (ART) and other alternative methods of family planning can be emotionally draining, expensive, and time-consuming. Many of these processes can contribute to anxiety, depression, burnout, and absenteeism, which are likely to decrease employee productivity and performance.

By offering these benefits, you can alleviate some of the stress of family planning, which is likely to make your employees more engaged and improve employee morale. Research has shown that companies with high employee engagement and morale financially outperform the competition due to factors such as higher-quality work, less employee turnover, and increased sales.

Increase Diversity and Inclusion

Some health insurance companies only offer coverage for people who have experienced infertility, which can exclude same-sex couples and single people. Providing a wider range of fertility benefits without any pre-conditions shows that your company supports all employees equally.

In particular, your company will be poised to recruit and retain women at any age and LGBTQ+ employees, which will boost diversity and inclusion. Diverse workplaces often have increased employee morale, engagement, and financial performance.

How to Offer Fertility and Family Planning Benefits

There are two primary ways you can provide these benefits to your employees. You could choose a health insurance plan with the best coverage options or sign up for a third-party provider to supplement your existing plan.

Upgrade Your Health Insurance Plan

You may want to start by checking the coverage your health insurance plan currently offers and determine whether you can add more fertility coverage options. It’s important to make sure your plan doesn’t only cover employees diagnosed with infertility and that it covers services that will also be advantageous for LGBTQ+ couples and single people, such as fertility preservation, adoption, and purchasing eggs or sperm.

As you evaluate benefit plans, consider asking:

• Is an infertility diagnosis required for coverage?
• Are employees required to try medication and less invasive treatments before being eligible for IUI or IVF?
• What family planning methods are covered?
• Are the coverage options different for LGBTQ+ couples or single people?
• Is there a dollar or cycle limit on coverage?
• Are there any age limits for IVF benefits or any other coverage?

Use a Specialized Provider

You may pay more if you use a specialized provider like Carrot, Progeny, Maven Clinic, or Kindbody, but most have additional perks like access to experts who can walk your employees through the various treatment options, more in-network doctors, and a wider range of covered services.

Whether you use a specialized provider or add services to your health insurance plan, it’s beneficial to choose a plan that covers donor egg and sperm, adoption and surrogacy payments, artificial insemination procedures, and fertility preservation.

Promote Your Benefits to Prospective Employees

Whichever way you choose to offer fertility benefits for your employees, letting candidates know about them may help you seal the deal with top contenders. Mention these benefits anywhere you discuss your benefits package, such as in your job descriptions and on the career page of your company’s website.

Continue to Improve Your HR Policies

Offering fertility benefits can help you recruit and retain top talent, boost employee morale, and foster a more diverse and inclusive workplace, making your business more successful. Keep up the momentum by signing up to receive expert hiring and management advice from Monster.

The post How to Offer Fertility Benefits at Your Company appeared first on Monster.com.

Today’s most successful employers offer a wide range of PTO, from traditional vacation leave, sick days, and holidays to personal days, bereavement, professional development, community service, mental health days, and more. Also common are PTO policies that offer a bank of days that can be used for any reason.

More companies than ever are offering PTO, with 90 percent offering it to full-time employees and 77 percent providing it to part-time employees, usually on a prorated basis.

What Is PTO?

PTO can refer to any paid time off, including:

• vacation days
• sick days
• standard and floating holidays
• personal days
• bereavement leave
• parental leave

Increasingly, in HR circles, the acronym PTO refers to policies that bundle together all categories of paid time off and allow employees to use them as they see fit without having to attribute the reason for taking time off to any specific cause.

The idea is that undifferentiated PTO policies are more respectful toward employees and treat them as professionals with the autonomy to regulate their own leave for whatever legitimate purpose they see fit.

Why Is PTO Important?

Disengaging from the mental and physical strains of full-time work is necessary to optimize productivity, problem solving, creativity, and innovation. Well-rested employees are more effective, and time away can even fuel inspiration—80 percent of employees say they’ve experienced breakthroughs about work problems while on vacation.

PTO can also be an effective way to prevent employee burnout and increase retention. Even more important, making PTO available to your employees can be crucial to maintaining their health and reducing related costs, as evidenced by the fact that men who do not take vacation time are 30 percent more likely to suffer a heart attack than men who do take vacation time.

In addition, a growing number of job applicants are prioritizing flexible and generous time off benefits when considering a job offer. As a result, a growing number of employers are focusing on refining their PTO policy, recognizing that it outranks other considerations for today’s job seekers.

Different Types of Paid Time Off

In terms of how you grant PTO, you have a few options. You can “front-load” PTO so that all employees have access to their full allotment of paid time off for the year as soon as it starts, or you can implement an accrued time off policy, or you can offer unlimited PTO. You can allow employees to carry over unused PTO into the following year or require them to use all their PTO by the end of a calendar year.

Accrued PTO

Under an accrued time off policy, employees earn portions of their PTO as they work. For example, you might release seven days of PTO for every six months worked. You may require accrued time off for first-year employees and lift the requirement after one year of service, or you may choose to require accruals for all employees.

Front-loaded PTO

Front-loading PTO, on the other hand, allows for a level of mutual trust between management and employees, as it shows your workers you trust them to use their time off as they believe they need to.

Unlimited PTO

Some companies offer unlimited PTO policies, which allow employees to determine for themselves how much time off they need and to use it as they like. In addition to showing trust and respect for your workforce, this approach is an increasingly popular recruitment tool.

Whichever strategy you choose, you can still require employees to provide advance notice before they take time off, with the understanding that prior notice may not be possible under certain conditions, such as for sick days or bereavement leave.

How to Implement a PTO Policy

Increasingly, employers are working to demonstrate to employees that time off is an important aspect of a healthy company culture. You show that you value time off by making clear that employees will not be punished for taking vacation and personal days, nor will they be rewarded for failing to take time off.

Employers still have a long way to go in this arena, as even in workplaces that offer PTO, 33 percent of employees report that they fear they will be punished for using their earned time off. You can counter this trend by celebrating when employees use PTO and having managers remind direct reports to schedule vacation time.

Paid Time Off: Legal Considerations

There is no federal requirement that employers provide employees with PTO, though some workers who are contracted by government agencies may be eligible for mandated PTO under certain circumstances.

In addition, some states consider earned time off a form of compensation, while others don’t. It’s essential to familiarize yourself with state legal requirements before finalizing your PTO policy.

Use PTO to Gain a Recruiting Advantage

If you’re looking to stand out among your competitors in your efforts to attract and retain talent, consider implementing some of these popular PTO policies:

• Offer paid parental leave separate from the short-term disability leave typically offered to employees following pregnancy, and make sure to offer the same time off to dads and adoptive parents.
• Offer paid time off for employees who volunteer. This can be coupled with company-sponsored and team-based volunteer opportunities to increase your business’s ties to the community, underscore your corporate values and mission, support teambuilding, and boost employee morale.
• Allow for immediate or near-immediate use of PTO, including vacation time and parental leave, for new hires.
• Allow employees to donate unused time off to fellow employees in need, such as employees undergoing treatment for a health crisis, caring for sick family members, or facing other forms of hardship.
• Allow employees to donate the cash value of unused PTO to charity (and offer matching funds as well).
• Set up an easy-to-use automated platform that allows workers to track and make better use of their PTO.

Learn More About the Best Strategies to Attract and Retain Top Performers

Now that you know how to design a competitive paid time off policy, learn more about the latest hiring and management practices with expert advice from Monster.

This article is not intended as a substitute for professional legal advice. Always seek the advice of an attorney regarding any legal questions you may have.

The post Paid Time Off: Creating a PTO Policy for Your Staff appeared first on Monster.com.

Having a strong benefits package helps employees feel supported and promotes better health and happiness — and healthier, happier employees produce higher-quality work. It also incentivizes employees to stay longer, reducing employee turnover. In fact, a 2022 MetLife survey found that as many as 73 percent of your employees would stay in their job longer if the benefits were worth it.

In this article, we’ll explain the key differences between employee benefits and perks and share suggestions for creating a compelling compensation package. This will help you improve employee morale and your company culture, so your business stands out as a great place to work.

What’s the Difference Between Employee Benefits and Perks?

Benefits and perks are not the same, and each offers a unique advantage to your employee recruitment strategy.

Benefits are any of the programs and recruitment tools that are considered part of your employees’ salary. These are programs such as health, life, and dental insurance that your employees would otherwise have to pay themselves.

Perks, on the other hand, are extra rewards for your staff in addition to their salary. These non-wage compensations tend to be things like complimentary snacks and lunches, office parties, and discounted gym memberships.

Curate a set of employee benefits and perks that makes your business not only competitive, but also a fun and exciting place to work. Aim to offer benefits that keep your business competitive recruitment-wise, but also include those extra perks that make your business stand out.

Which Benefits Are You Required to Offer Employees?

Before you pick and choose which benefits you want to offer, know there are some that you are mandated to offer by law, depending on your and your employees’ location. (It can be helpful to have a lawyer review your compensation and perks.) These include:

1. Medicare and Social Security

All employers and employees in the United States pay Social Security taxes. These withholdings qualify the employee for Social Security and Medicare coverage after retirement. For employees who retire after the age of 65 (or 67 for those born in 1960 or later), Social Security benefits cover a set percentage of their pre-retirement income — less if the employee retires early, and more if the employee retires later. Those who pay into Social Security will also qualify for Medicare, which covers medical-related expenses, such as inpatient hospital care, copays, and other medical services and supplies.

2. Workers’ Compensation

Though you’re mandated to cover workers’ compensation insurance, the specific requirements vary from state to state. This insurance compensates employees who have sustained an illness or injury at work. The insurance helps employees recover a portion of their lost wages and pay for medical-related costs, such as doctor visits and medications.

3. Family and Medical Leave

Under the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA), your business is required to provide job-protected, unpaid leave to employees who have worked for you for over 12 months and need time off for an illness, parental leave, or to help a family member with an illness.

4. Unemployment

As an employer, you are required to pay unemployment taxes at both the state and federal level. This ensures that when your employees are laid off, they have some income compensation between jobs. Most programs provide up to 26 weeks of pay at about half the rate they were making.

5. Health Insurance

If your business employs 50 or more full-time employees (or the equivalent in part-time work), the Affordable Care Act requires you to provide affordable health insurance to your employees. Offering health insurance is the golden standard nowadays, so you might want to offer it even if you aren’t required.

Which Additional Benefits Should You Offer Employees?

Not all benefits are required by law. These extras that will make working for your company more attractive:

1. Paid Time Off (PTO)

It’s important to offer employees paid time off to facilitate a healthy work-life balance. As a result, employees will experience less burnout and be more focused and productive at work. Offer PTO and encourage employees to take that time for themselves.

2. 401k

Companies that offer employees the option to invest in a 401k have an easier time attracting and retaining top talent. Employees want to plan for their financial future, and offering a 401k is a way to help them reach their retirement goals. It also helps your businesses take advantage of certain tax breaks and deductions. While you don’t have to match employees’ contributions, some companies do (up to a certain amount).

3. Life Insurance

Offering life insurance provides your employees with peace of mind. This reduces employee stress and contributes to a positive sense of wellbeing.

What Perks Should You Offer Employees?

While benefits help employees feel cared for and secure in their life, perks are what make your company stand out. It can be fun to choose creative employee benefits and perks to offer.

1. Free Book Programs

You could offer employees a free book program where they can get reimbursed for choosing certain books, such as ones that delve into growing leadership or intrapersonal skills. Set up time to discuss the books with an employee-led book club. While you encourage learning, your employees will grow together as a team and expanding their knowledge at a faster rate.

2. Complementary Food and Snacks

If your employees work on-site, consider filling your kitchen area with healthy snacks and drinks to keep employees fueled during the workday. Although it might seem like a simple offering, providing free food for employees helps them feel valued and gives them a chance to refuel.

3. Spa and Gym Membership Discounts

Another way to encourage employee wellbeing through company perks is to partner with spas and gyms to offer employees discounted services. Employees will appreciate the special rates, and the spas and gyms will get extra business.

4. Mental Health Support

According to the National Institute of Mental Health, nearly one in five adults in the United States struggles with depression. Consider offering employee benefits and perks that provide mental health support, such as mental health days off or access to therapy, through an employee assistance program (EAP). Effective EAPs help employees connect with the right professionals that can help them work through whatever difficulties they face, such as anxiety, depression, or substance abuse.

5. Pet-friendly Offices

Lots of employees have pets, especially as remote work has gotten more prevalent, companies are touting pet-friendly offices, where employees can bring in their well-behaved pooch or kitty for the day. Some companies have reported lower employee stress and better productivity.

Choose Employee Benefits and Perks That Continue to Strengthen Your Company Culture

These employee benefits and perks can improve employee morale, boost employee engagement, and increase performance, making your business stronger. Keep up the momentum with expert hiring and management advice from Monster.

The post 13 Employee Benefits and Perks That Will Help You Recruit and Retain Top Talent appeared first on Monster.com.

Codify your vacation policy

Even if business in your industry slows in summer or you offer unlimited PTO, it’s wise to maintain a formal vacation policy. Be sure to put it in writing and then distribute it to all employees annually and whenever a substantial change is made. “Structure is important,” says Nancy Saperstone, senior HR business partner at Insight Performance, a human resources consulting firm. “Fair vacation policies are not loosey-goosey.”

Don’t be arbitrary

Make sure that vacation requests are granted or denied judiciously. “Managers reviewing time-off requests must be consistent to avoid the perception of favoritism,” says Jennifer Gunter, secretary of the HR Florida State Council. At small companies in particular, it’s important that all employees’ vacation requests are solicited before any summer time off is granted.

Be transparent

If you want to keep your employees, don’t offend them by handling their vacation requests with a “because I said so” attitude. “Transparency is key,” says Saperstone. “You have to let people know how you’re making these decisions so they understand and respect how it’s done.” David Galic, a spokesperson with employee-scheduling software vendor Humanity.com, gets to the heart of the matter of a well-managed vacation policy: “Managers should give reasons for declining vacation requests.”

Enumerate the criteria for reviewing vacation requests

Employees will be more likely to make workable vacation requests if they understand the deciding factors in your vacation policies. “You don’t want to only reward senior employees,” says Saperstone. You might, for example, prioritize requests that come in early, or reward high performers with the first choice of vacation dates, or set up a regular rotation to determine whose requests will be considered first.

Encourage communication among team members

“We have an HRIS system where employees can make vacation requests, and also a shared calendar,” says Loni Freeman, vice president of human resources at public relations firm SSPR. “We ask employees to communicate with their account team to ensure client coverage.”

Make flexibility a two-way street

If you give employees some flexibility in the workplace, you’re in a position to ask them for flexibility of their vacation arrangements. “We have core hours, but otherwise employees can decide at what time they arrive at the office and leave,” says Freeman. “Because we allow daily flexibility, employees may be willing to take a 15- or 20-minute client call on a PTO day,” says Freeman. But take care to strictly define responsibilities that carry into vacation time and to limit work during vacations to the absolute minimum.

Consider ‘summer Fridays’ to build goodwill and cooperation

As of 2017, some 42 percent of employers chose to give employees Friday afternoons off, according to a CEB survey. Given that many employees’ minds will already be at the beach after lunch on TGIF day, formalizing this bonus time off may cost little in productivity while keeping employees engaged all summer—and help generate cooperation to manage everyone’s PTO requests.

Be upfront with your vacation blackout policy

Unless your business depends on seasonal hires, a vacation policy with blackout periods is likely to sow employee discontent. What do you do if an employee has a family wedding during the blackout? You could create an exception, but that might breed additional resentment among other employees. If you must ban time off at certain times of the year, “it’s really important to let employees know during their onboarding that the company sometimes needs to have a blackout period for vacations,” says Galic.

Offer rewards for those who work on sought-after days off

As a part of your small business vacation policy, consider giving employees special consideration if they agree to work certain days that most people want to take off. This can be especially important at small businesses, where co-workers are familiar with the comings and goings of people, which can easily develop into time-off envy. “You can pay time-and-a-half for certain days,” such as July 3rd this year, which falls in the middle of what many employees will see as a four-day weekend, says Saperstone. “Or give them an extra day off; think creatively.”

Consider summer stay bonuses for high-turnover hourly jobs

Small businesses that depend on hourly workers could suffer from high turnover. It’s wise to offer bonuses to workers who stay with the company through the summer and take time off only when it has been requested and granted well in advance.

Cross-train in anticipation of heavy PTO periods

Cross-training, which goes hand-in-hand with professional development, can be a tremendous boost to your vacation policy. “Cross-training is particularly important with our largest clients, where there are two or three people on the team who know as much about a given client as the lead person does,” says Freeman. Cross-training is also critical at small companies where many tasks are often carried out by just one employee.

Want more tips about how to manage your small business vacation policy? Monster has great ideas

Each and every employee that a small business has is critical to day-to-day operations. However, that need must be balanced with an employee’s need for time off. Monster can help you find the balance. Sign up for Monster Hiring Solutions. With a vast database of expert guidance, you’ll find easy-to-use solutions for your pressing employment and recruiting needs. Start today!

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Workers who are better at managing their finances are less likely to end up with financial woes or make hardship withdrawals from company 401(k)s. What’s more, providing financial education programs for employees can be a budget-friendly investment with easy setup and lasting value.

What do Financial Education Initiatives Look Like?

Many large companies recognize the benefits of offering financial education. For example, communications conglomerate Cox Enterprises provides employees with free access to one-on-one phone consultations with financial advisors. These conversations cover topics such as debt counseling, retirement planning, budgeting, and replaying student loans. Additionally, a “Know Your Numbers” initiative provides a personal retirement readiness statement to eligible Cox employees to help them stay on track with saving for a comfortable retirement.

These programs have had positive results and led to higher employee participation rates in retirement savings plans. “Management cares about these programs and helps drive them as educational tools for employees to understand and utilize their benefits,” says Cox former Senior Manager of Public Relations Elizabeth Olmstead.

Providing Financial Literacy for Employees Doesn’t Need to be Expensive

Providing financial education for employees doesn’t require a lot of time or money. Even informal sessions can make an impact. Nest DC, a boutique property management company schedules a brown bag lunch-and-learn about personal finances for employees. The sessions had huge turnouts and ran much longer than expected, proving how eager employees were to learn about finances, says Chief People Officer Veronica Vivas.

Nest DC bought access to an online finance program and offered employees a chance to win a $1,000 in exchange for watching the program’s videos and completing short quizzes. “It was low cost, $10 per person per month, including the budgeting tool,” Vivas says.

This program encouraged more employees to sign up for the company’s retirement account, and helped boost employee morale and cross-team relationships. A group of employees were even inspired to save money by cooking lunch together in the company kitchen, instead of going out to lunch.

Tap Into Service Provider Expertise

Companies that supply benefits to your organization can be a great resource for financial wellness programs. MassMutual, for example, conducts free, on-site financial workshops called PlanSmart for its clients’ employees.

Each week the presenter talks about a financial topic and gives employees homework that helps them apply the lessons to their own financial situations. At the end of the program, employees have a greater understanding of their investments and how well they’re saving for retirement. Your benefits provider may offer similar programs.

Consider Hiring a Certified Financial Planner

You could also hire a local Certified Financial Planner (CFP) to provide financial literacy for employees. For example, Aaron Kahn, a CFP with Wealth Management Strategies, conducts roundtable discussions with his clients’ employees and provides them with financial advice.

The benefit of an independent financial advisor is that they may be less likely to try to sell you something. “Someone from an investment firm might tell the employees to put extra income into investments, while a life insurance company adviser would likely suggest buying a life policy,” he says. “A neutral adviser will discuss pros and cons of each option and how to calculate the best return.”

Promote Your Financial Education Program

Whether you choose to use a knowledgeable financial adviser or a reputable program, offering financial literacy for employees has clear benefits for organizations and employees alike. An added bonus is that you can pitch your company’s financial education initiative to promising new candidates during the hiring process. Get help with this and learn other expert-recommended recruitment and management strategies.

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Since today’s job seekers value employee development, even above salary, when considering an offer, today’s employers need to be prepared to invest in learning and development opportunities. Using a variety of the five training and development strategies below, you can improve retention and help your workforce acquire the skills they need to grow your business.

Employee Learning: Getting Started

Your training initiative should begin with a skills gap assessment to determine which skills your workforce currently has and which you’re missing. Here’s how to do it:

• Step 1: Survey your workforce: Since job candidates tend to highlight only the skills that pertain to their current role during the application process, the skills you’re seeking may be hidden within your current staff.
• Step 2: Determine what skills you’re missing: Take note of the skills that are in short supply among your current employees. If you’re unsure which skills you need, you can consult with experts from professional associations or hire an outside recruiter with experience in your field.
• Step 3: Create a plan to address skills gaps: Build on the skills your employees already have and address those that are absent. Create a strategy that includes a mix of employee training and development opportunities that will suit all workers.

What to Prioritize

It seems simple to prioritize the skills that are standing between you and your profit potential, but that might cost you more in the long run. Your employee learning program should prioritize the following, in this order:

• Compliance and safety training: Failing to address these areas first can cost you thousands—or even millions—in government fines or legal liability. Neglecting safety training can tarnish your reputation as an employer and business, and even lead to easily avoidable tragedies.
• Costly skills gaps: Next, address staff development training for the skills you need to optimize efficiency and maximize profits, those that are in the shortest supply among your workforce, and those that you are spending the most money to outsource.
• Competitive skills: Developing the most highly valued skills in your industry internally can save you money in recruiting costs, increase your chances of becoming an innovator in your sector, and make your business the envy of your competitors.
• Skills needed for succession: Make sure your employees have the skills and knowledge needed to jump into roles one level above their current status should those positions be left vacant by unforeseen circumstances. Not only will this make your workplace more stable, but it will also show your workforce that you have a vested interest in their future and increase retention and loyalty.

Once you’ve determined your priorities for employee learning, you will likely need to use a mix of approaches and benefits to optimize the potential of your current workforce.

1. Self-directed Learning

From onboarding to skills acquisition to government-recognized certification courses, many employee training and development options that once needed to be in-person and instructor-led can now be offered through online self-directed modules that your employees can make their way through at their own pace. They can backtrack to review sections and take self-assessments along the way.

Self-directed learning modules and materials can be found for free at sites like edX, one of many Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) that make it possible for employees to access thousands of online classes for free, including courses taught at the university level, often using the same syllabus, readings, and lesson plans.

You can also contract with an HR training platform that provides employee learning modules on topics like cybersecurity and sexual harassment.

2. Instructor-led Learning

Small session instructor-led employee training sessions can be held in-person or remotely. These can be led by internal supervisors and experts or by specialized trainers that you bring on-site. An added benefit to holding small group onsite employee learning sessions is that they can help to promote teambuilding, forge cross-team relationships, and increase employee morale.

3. Knowledge Sharing

Once you undertake a skills gap assessment, you’re likely to learn that you have a greater range of expertise within your workforce than you thought. Leverage it with internal knowledge sharing across departments and levels of seniority.

One way to do this is by sponsoring a formalized mentoring program, pairing new employees with senior ones, and entry-level hires with managers. You can also foster cross-team and cross-departmental learning by sponsoring lunch-and-learns or having entry-level employees spend time rotating through various departments.

4. Sponsored Learning

Unlike required training, sponsored staff training and development opportunities are offered to employees who want to take advantage of them. Some of your employees will jump at the chance to continue their education and attain higher levels of proficiency in their field with the help of tuition assistance programs.

You can also offer first-come first-serve signups to take a course or seminar provided by a professional association or local community college or a fund that allows each employee up to a certain amount of money for certification courses through a platform like Coursera.

5. Outside Expertise

Consider investing in outside experts to help train and develop employees in areas closely aligned to your core mission, such as sales, customer service, or efficient design. You can also bring in outside experts to help your workers acquire a range of life skills. Investing in sessions from a life coach, financial advisor, or career counselor can help your employees learn valuable skills that allow them to be their most professional version of themselves.

You may need to invest in new platforms, increased benefits, and outside training, but in the long run, being seen as an employer who invests in employee development will pay off in higher retention and increased efficiency, innovation, and profits.

You Have an Employee Learning Strategy. Now Increase Your Knowledge.

Increase your know-how as an employer with expert advice and the latest hiring news from Monster.

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If you need convincing, consider the numbers:

• Monster’s Future of Work Report found that 43 percent of job seekers cite healthcare benefits as an important consideration when working with recruiters.
• Data from MIT indicates that a toxic work environment is even more likely to lead to employee churn than inadequate compensation.
• 89 percent of surveyed workers who recently left their jobs said they did so because they felt burned out and/or unsupported.
• 88 percent of job seekers compare healthcare benefits before deciding between multiple offers.
• Increasing your investment in employee wellness is worth the investment—for every $1 employers invest in a healthy workplace they see a return of $2-$3 in increased productivity, retention, and morale.
• Despite this, 24 percent of employees don’t believe their employer cares about their well-being.

Job seekers have made it clear that they want to work for employers who are invested in their well-being. Providing the employee wellness benefits they want can make you the go-to destination for job seekers in your sector or community and help you keep your top-performers on your payroll.

What Is an Employee Wellness Program?

Employee wellness programs promote health in the workplace through a range of policies and benefits designed to support fitness, nutrition, self-care, stress reduction, and other evidence-based approaches that enhance overall health.

How Do Employee Wellness Programs Benefit Employers?

In addition to providing an advantage when it comes to recruitment and retention, the benefits of employee wellness programs include:

• Improving your employer brand by showing that you care for your employees.
• Lowering health care and disability benefits costs.
• Reducing absenteeism due to sick days.
• Reducing work-related stress that can lead to employee attrition.
• Improving your employees’ mental health, morale, teamwork, and adaptability.

What to Offer: Wellness Benefits Options

A generous employee healthcare package that includes vision and dental is a good starting point, but many of today’s job candidates are also seeking generous fertility benefits and access to holistic healthcare options.

You’ll need to go beyond standard healthcare and disability insurance to gain a reputation for fostering wellness, especially in competitive sectors like tech or healthcare. Long hours and stressful working conditions can lead to poor health outcomes for your employees. Generous paid time off (PTO) and forced time off policies discourage workers from forgoing their vacation time and becoming run down and stressed out, and signal to potential and current employees that their well-being is vital.

Large and small employers can get creative with wellness benefits by partnering with a local gym to offer reduced fitness memberships, and keeping break rooms supplied with healthy snack and plenty of water. Host wellness weeks and bring in experts and practitioners—massage therapists, life coaches, yoga and self-defense instructors, and nutritionists—to lead onsite or virtual seminars. Pay for mindfulness apps or healthy cooking classes, create a meditation space, and sponsor smoking-cessation programs.

With so many options to consider, you’ll need to select the ones that make sense for your workplace and then you’ll need to determine how to introduce your employee wellness benefits to your employees in a way that ensures they will take advantage of it.

Craft an Employee Wellness Program

Your first step will be to assess your employees’ wellness needs by conducting an employee survey. The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) provides guidelines on how to design employee surveys to take your workforce’s temperature. To comply with the privacy laws, make the survey anonymous.

This will help you gauge what kinds of benefits your employees are most interested in and the kinds of healthcare challenges they face. It will also serve to alert your workers that you are serious about fostering wellness.

If you are a mid-sized or larger employer, your next step will be to create a wellness committee that includes representatives from HR and other departments. Together, the committee will assess your employee survey to:

• Establish wellness goals.
• Research benefits options.
• Make recommendations on what your wellness program should include.

The findings and progress of the committee should be shared companywide to help signal your commitment to employee wellbeing.

Some benefit options may be too pricey, but others, such as smoking cessation programs, can be extremely low cost and high reward. Work with your benefits team to determine what you can afford, create a budget, and begin assembling the components of your wellness initiative.

Your program should target your goals. If your employees report elevated levels of work-based anxiety, your No. 1 priority should be stress reduction. If yours is a field that leads to a sedentary workday with employees sitting at a desk in front of a screen all day, then you may want to invest in fitness club memberships and distribute maps with nearby running, biking, and hiking trails.

Announce Your Commitment to Wellness

Once you’ve created your new program, announce your new employee wellness benefits in a comprehensive way that ensures that your employees—both on site and remote—get the message. Creating a culture of wellness by featuring your wellness options on your website, sponsoring a series of guest speakers or seminars, or hosting a companywide healthy lunch buffet.

Create opportunities for community that are wellness focused. You can create a rewards program based on healthier lifestyle choices or encourage employees to invite family members to take part in fitness activities like charity 5K runs. Recognize fitness achievements with gift certificates, PTO, and shout-outs.

A Word of Caution

In addition to legal considerations, such as guarding employees’ health information, be conscious of social biases tied to false perceptions of fitness. Framing health as a matter of personal responsibility can stigmatize chronic illness and disability.

Don’t tie your wellness program to body mass or weight, and never encourage weight loss contests. Not only can these types of contests further stigmatize employees based on body size and disability, but they also can be triggering, even deadly, for employees with eating disorders.

Instead, focus on reducing stress, forming strong relationships, and offering lots of fun options to engage in healthy activities and increase knowledge. Let your employees know you care about their wellbeing, and their increased loyalty will contribute to a healthier bottom line.

After You’ve Established a Robust Employee Wellness Benefits Program

Your new wellness initiative is just one step in your journey toward creating a management environment that attract and retains top talent. Learn about the latest hiring news, along with expert advice and easy-to-follow how-tos from Monster.

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