How to Design a Holistic Employee Benefits Program

Employers 11.16.2021 3 MIN

Employee benefits programs are embracing a holistic wellness approach. Here’s how you can design your company’s benefits program with holistic benefits in mind.

Employer benefits programs have traditionally addressed employees’ physical health, as well as retirement savings plans. But more and more, companies are re-evaluating their programs, looking at the benefit landscape across Corporate America and utilizing employees’ input to understand what they can do to more fully support their workers’ holistic wellness needs by offering:

Resources to help workers manage both physical and mental health issues
Access to information, tools and guidance to support sound financial decision-making
Structure and resources for long-term planning

This holistic approach views employees as more than just workers. It sees them as individuals with myriad stressors outside of work, which can often carry over into the workplace and impact the quality of their work.

By taking this broader view, employers hope to reduce employee stress, improve productivity and lower staff turnover.

Start by learning your employees’ needs

To offer a truly holistic benefits program, it’s important for employers to take into account the varying needs of a diverse workforce. Supporting your employees’ overall well-being, as well as recruiting and retaining top talent, requires a clear understanding of both the diverse challenges your workers face and how well your benefits address them.

Employee surveys are also an excellent vehicle for gaining insights and gauging potential interest in new benefit offerings—and their resulting potential cost. Surveys can also send a positive message to your employees that you value their opinion and plan to act on their needs. Conducting an employee survey can take time and effort to plan and execute effectively, but the following pointers can help.

Tips on planning and executing a survey to uncover employees’ benefit needs.

Create a solid survey game plan.

You may get more meaningful results if you conduct it during periods when employees have more time to focus on their responses.

Get employees involved.

Obtain employees’ input when developing the survey, and act on the findings.

Keep your survey questions relevant and focused.

Limit your questions to areas where your company can and will consider taking action. If you don’t, your survey may raise employees’ expectations, creating false hopes for unrealistic new benefits offerings. Don’t make your survey too long or employees might not participate.

Put external professional resources to work for you.

Consider enlisting the services of third-parties such as benefits providers, consulting groups, professional industry organizations and survey specialists. Some financial wellness benefits providers can leverage aggregate employee data to create a feedback loop that provides employers with insights on overall employee needs, actions and benefit appreciation.

At Ayco, we can partner with your human resources and benefits teams to help drive utilization of organizational programs and provide metrics to build a deeper understanding of your employee population. Our comprehensive financial planning benefits can positively impact corporations through: