How to create a sense of belonging through employee benefits

In our last article, we looked at how belonging takes reward and recognition to the next level. Today, we’ll share specific ways employee benefits can build that elusive but valuable asset – and why belonging should be a cornerstone of your talent attraction and retention strategy.

The situation as it stands

The Great Resignation, together with changing employee values and a cost of living crisis, is causing a crisis for employers.

Increasingly, people want jobs that offer a better overall employee experience – most importantly work/life balance. Flexibility, personal autonomy and purposeful work outweigh salary and standard career progression in many people’s assessment. Companies are finding that skilled staff leave to quest after these things and that new staff are hard to attract in today’s competitive and understaffed job market.

Present financial realities rule out salary increases for most companies. While some big companies might be able to buy themselves out of staffing-related problems by offering inflated wages, this isn’t true for many employers. A Gartner survey of CFOs and CEOs showed that 51% of organisations would only raise wages for their top performers.

The vice president of the Gartner Finance practice outlined what the strategy will have to be for many: “Organisations will continue to look at benefits beyond compensation as an approach to fight employee attrition and keep costs across the labour force as balanced as possible.”

The cost of living crisis is eating into the funds businesses have available just as it does to ordinary families. While we’re out of pocket, we’ll need to be smart, looking at salary sacrifice and national insurance contributions, and strategically using reward and recognition to create a strong sense of belonging.

Embodying your employees’ values: the foundation of belonging

Your potential recruits in today’s workforce do not share the common values of the workers of yesteryear. Our HR leaders report unpacks our findings further, but suffice to say, 87% of HR professionals agree that young people see environmental and societal risks as more impactful than business leaders do.

The new waves of talent are looking for fulfilling work they can believe in. Jobs that have a positive impact on the environment and society. In some ways this is a high bar, but the good news is that if you can offer this, you’ll secure the services of an employee motivated by passion and prepared to go above and beyond the call of duty in their role.

So how do you achieve that? Your company’s actual line of business is most likely a down-to-earth, non-superhero trade. But even by simply building a company culture that supports people’s emotional, mental and physical well-being, within your direct sphere of influence, you are creating a better world.

It’s partly the big issues – if fossil fuels are at the heart of your products or services, it’s going to be hard for you – but equally important are all the small business decisions, the day-to-day threads that together weave the wider picture of what you stand for.

Employee benefits are one of these threads, and since they’re peripheral to the core of your business, they’re a great place to start. To create room for the deepest sense of belonging, you might need to change the core operations of your business at some point – at Amba, we did just that – but if you’re reading this, you might not have that kind of influence yet. So let’s talk about how employee benefits can move the needle in the right direction.

Benefits say something – does it resonate with your people?

While employee benefits are just one part of the belonging story, their role is key. In combination with the strategies outlined above, they’re a powerful tool. But only if you have the right benefits on offer.

First, you need to make a fundamental decision about what kind of employer you are.

What does it mean to belong to this company? Unless you get this right, it’s hard to choose benefits that express and reinforce this identity.

And no matter how generous, there’s no point in providing benefits that are useless to your workforce. For example, offering cars to a young, London-based workforce who couldn’t afford the daily congestion charge.

Building a benefits scheme is not painting by numbers. You can’t copy someone else’s template. Getting it right takes creative thought. One well-known tech company offers their employees free access to a financial advisor whenever they need it. While a large mobile phone provider pays for passenger ferries to pick its employees up on the Thames, saving their workforce a frustrating commute through London’s traffic.

Don’t get locked into thinking that benefits with a big price tag are best, small, sincere gestures are worth more – using the resources you directly have to hand can actually speak louder. One leading shoe manufacturer gifted a number of its new employees a new pair of shoes on their first day. The footwear arrived boxed and unannounced at the new team member’s front door – in the correct shoe size.

How to get belonging right

It’s not uncommon for companies to copy the benefits of other organisations. But this is rarely a good option as no matter how good they may be or prestigious the company is, their benefits won’t reflect your values or what your workforce cares about.

This can be particularly problematic when legacy companies reinvent themselves to present an image that matches the disruptive DNA of new contenders. Some simply cut their losses and launch a new brand that’s only loosely related to their core.

One financial services company put their offshoot brand office in the same building as their core organisation, and they offered this subdivision a more relaxed culture and dress code coupled with a desirable benefits package. As staff working with the original brand looked on, though, it generated a fair bit of bitterness and division instead of belonging.

No one can create belonging by artificial means. To nurture it, leaders need to let go of their own frames of reference, to listen, to surface issues that are going unnoticed – and then create change.

If creating a benefits package that builds belonging, expresses your company’s values and resonates with your employees’ passions is a daunting task, we offer a free benefits observation report to help you get started. Get in touch to learn more..

Our Lumina platform also gives you a head start, giving you access to benefits that resonate with an emerging generation. And we’ll be happy to guide and support you every step of the way.

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