How Your Employee Benefits Program Reflects Company Culture

Going above and beyond your standard employee benefits program is a powerful way to differentiate yourself as an employer and become a top place to work.

Benefits packages are designed to entice new hires and reward ongoing employees. The benefits you choose should reflect your business strategy and the core values of your company culture. While this may seem like a natural part of your business structure, finding the right employee benefits program to match company culture, finding the right benefits program to match company culture requires a strong HR strategy. The alignment between the two is becoming increasingly important as transparency and company culture have come to the forefront of the employee-employer relationship.

Companies are hiring more consciously for company culture, and, likewise, professionals are taking a closer look at company culture as they decide which role to take.

One of the top ways professionals gauge a company's culture, and compatibility is your unique benefits package. The details of your package inform new hires of the work-life balance you offer and what aspects of life your company values most. For example, everyone understands that a company that provides a doggy daycare loves animals. Still, the other details of your benefits packages also reflect your culture in more subtle and sometimes essential ways.

Benefits packages are put together methodically. However, the way you make your choices and which additional employee perks you choose to offer reflect directly on the values of your business and company culture.

Company culture and benefits create a natural cyclical process. As benefits shape lifestyle, lifestyle shapes your team, and team shapes the company culture, which shapes your choices in benefits. Employees are learning to read these details and what they say about the company. But, most of all, they are looking for a good match for benefits packages that reveal a company they'd like to work for and a company culture they'd like to join. 

The right package helps draw the right people who are the right fit for your team.

Of course, your benefits might not be sending the right message. For example, you might offer unlimited PTO as a work-life balance effort, but combined with employees, real schedule burnout or time-off-guilt is created.

Or your benefits may have stagnated while the company culture took off. Often, a benefits package is built from long-standing policies and stacked in pieces over time. Does your package still reflect your company culture? Or could this new way of looking at benefits help you hone a package that truly reflects your brand, company culture, and how you want to provide for your employees?

An employee's benefits package is more than just money, insurance, and perks; In total, it can define the lifestyle and work-life options of your entire workforce. No doubt, the schedules you offer determine your team's plans to work and sleep. Beyond that, however, everything from insurance policies to wellness perks defines how people live.

For example, your insurance packages may be configured for individuals, families, young people without health issues, or preventative care for all ages. If you offer stock options, you also encourage employees to learn about investing. Likewise, financial advisors and savings programs promote financially balanced employee lifestyles.

Of course, the spotlight today is on work-life balance and wellness benefits. Flexible and hybrid schedules are more adaptive to many lifestyles, backgrounds, and even medical accommodations. Providing fitness centers allows employees to stay active before, after, and even during their shifts. The options you make available with benefits packages effectively define and influence the lives your employees can lead while working the job.

Here are ways to innovate your benefits that go above and beyond the basics of insurance and compensation. Using these programs and ideas, you can build an employee benefits program that genuinely reflects the living company culture you have and want to nurture.

Family values packages are a spotlight for businesses with many parental employees or employees with caregiver responsibilities and those who, at their core, always put family first. Family benefits also create a better work-life balance for all employees who may have obligations to the family at home.

Keeping your employees physically healthy also promotes energy, focus, and performance. Both nurturing company cultures and go-getter teams focus on health and wellness to take care of employees (and counteract the downsides of a desk job or repetitive motion work). Show your team you care about their health in and out of the office.

Many businesses embrace green and sustainable business practices, and it shows through in their benefits. Teams that care about the environment want to be included in green initiatives. Give back that good feeling of a green initiative to your eco-friendly team with benefit-perks that also help the environment.

Taking care of employee mental health helps everyone. You can prevent burnout and put self-management tools into the hands of your team. Show you care about personal problems and mental-emotional health while providing for employee privacy and personal strength. 

Start by refining your company culture and your core values. Unlike branding, this isn't about color and style, it's about the values your company acts on and prioritizes every day. What values does your brand proclaim to the clients, and how do you reflect that in business decisions? What values drive your team and your mission, and how can your benefits reflect that?

Some businesses have strong family values and do everything to support parents and caregivers. They offer flexible schedules and insurance that provides coverage to family members in the household. Some companies value camaraderie and teamwork, and their benefits provide more group activities and group membership in shared benefits programs. Some are carefully eco-friendly and take that into every benefit decision from the recycled coffee sticks to the electric car services.

Take a closer look at how your benefits influence your employees' lifestyle, work-life balance, and access to essentials. You may realize that some policies are holdovers or too one-size-fits-all for either your company culture or the current flexible workforce preferences. Take this opportunity to separate the benefits you offer and reimagine new packages that better reflect how you want to support and influence employees and entice new hires.

Explore the many options that can reflect your company's core values and the work-life balance you want to provide. What will make your team comfortable, financially and medically secure, and satisfied? What will reduce burnout stress and increase productive focus? How will show your team that your business values the acclaimed company-culture values through and through?

Decide on a new set of benefits you want to work in and find better ways to structure the packages you already offer.

Finally, reconstruct your employee benefits with the new perks. Each new employee package should not only offer balance and security; it should reflect the very core values of your company culture. Show new hires what it means to be part of the team and keep your current team onboard with benefits that make them feel like a part of your mission and operation.

Ready to discover the opportunities of a tailored benefits package for your company culture? Listen to your employees to grasp which benefits work for your company and what your company culture needs to create a complete, satisfying, and healthy employee experience. Make sure employee benefits updates are an ongoing initiative to keep benefits evolving with your living company culture.