It’s rare to receive a paper periodical in my office anymore, and even rarer that I take the time to flip through its pages. But the cover article of the February issue of Employee Benefit News caught my eye with the headline, “Reshaping the Industry: 50 Employers that Shook Up their Benefits.” Any regular reader of this blog knows that I’m a sucker for anything to do with benefits industry innovation, so I took a look at the article. Inside are short pieces on 50 companies who made changes to their benefits last year. As I read through, a few patterns emerged, which I thought were good fodder for this here blog.
Some interesting tidbits:
Most Prevalent Benefit Mentioned: Parental leave. In fact, it is mentioned more than twice as often as any other category of benefit enhancement, earning the official Bayou Benefits Hottest Employee Benefit Trend of 2018 Award (trademark pending)
Surprising Low Mentions: Fertility benefits (2 mentions) and adoption benefits (3 mentions)
Surprisingly High Mentions: Breast milk services, intended to assist nursing moms who must travel on business – the service will mail the milk home to baby
Inspirational: Even companies with traditionally lower-wage, transient workforces (e.g., foodservice) are making significant investments in tuition/education assistance
Kinda Boring, TBH: Increasing the 401(k) match
Benefit I Most Wish I Had: Annual supply of free Twinkies or Ding Dongs
Here’s a chart of the number of mentions of each type of benefit enhancement:
The overall takeaway for me here is the focus on non-insurance benefits. Clearly employers are getting more and more creative to recruit and retain their talent. And although the articles largely talks about jumbo employers, many of these benefits are within reach of companies of any size. Seems that many employers are realizing just having a good medical plan doesn’t cut it anymore.
Interested in learning how to implement benefits like the trailblazers in the EBN article? Drop us a line at bayoubenefits@gmail.com
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