If there’s one thing that any CEO or manager wants to know, it’s the best way to retain top talent. With recruiting times getting longer and the process becoming more expensive, companies are more concerned than ever with helping keep their new hires in their desks rather than headed out the door.
There are differing strategies on the best way to do this, however. Of course one popular tactic is to offer a higher salary. But many companies, especially small and medium-sized businesses, may not be in a position to be able to offer this kind of incentive. If this is the case, a new strategy may be needed.
Fortunately, it turns out that money isn’t as important to today’s workforce as other considerations are. According to the data, if you want your employees to stick around, improve your family benefits.
The millennial choice
If you need convincing that overhauling your family benefits is the way to go, look no further than the importance this strategy has among the ever-growing millennial contingent within the workforce. According to the Society for Human Resource Management, those millennials who had recently had a child are, not surprisingly, overwhelmingly in favor of improved family benefits plans.
Of this demographic, a whopping 83 percent indicated that they would consider changing jobs to go to a new position with better family benefits. Even millennials who have yet to enter parenthood share this desire; 62 percent of survey respondents overall expressed the possibility of changing jobs due to better benefits.
Big business paves the way
This trend is largely due to the recent actions of some of the country’s largest corporate giants. For example, Netflix, the online video-streaming magnate, recently announced that it would allow its employees to take up to one year of paid parental leave following the birth of a child. This is a huge leap in a workforce that has previously commodified paid time off of any kind.
Small-business owners may be content to let larger multinational organizations lead the way in terms of making policy. But they can also turn to PEO companies to offer expert HR services on par with that of larger companies, but without the associated cost of supporting an in-house department.