These benefits should be a testament to the culture of your business.

employees who know what benefits are offered and who take advantage of those benefits.

“It’s important for employers to leverage the tools, resources, and knowledge of your benefits broker by holding annual employee education meetings,” Mandolfo said. “This is the perfect way to ensure that your employees understand their benefits, and it builds better relationships.”

For example, Shandell said that while most health plans cover preventative care in full, only about 30% of the population utilize the benefit.

“I think that would be a huge, huge gain for people,” he said. “Make sure you read all the documentation thoroughly so you know what you have and what you’re paying for so when and if it comes time to use those benefits, you’ll have a better understanding of what you have to do and how to benefit from those insurances.”

Setting up benefits takes time, planning, and it costs money, so it’s not efficient or cost-effective if employees don’t know about their benefits.

“These benefits should be a testament to the culture of your business,” Royal said. “So it’s very important as an employer to be proactive in communicating benefits and programs to the current and new employees and certainly make an effort to support them around the enrollment process, making sure they understand all of their options.

“Have the benefits in the first place, but kind of do the handholding to make sure it’s most valuable to the employee, which in turn makes it great for the employer as well.”

In a work environment, no two employees are the same. An employer might have an employee who is fresh out of college and a veteran who has been with the company for 20 years. It is important to understand from a cultural alignment what is important to employees at both ends of the spectrum.

“Keep the employees’ wellness in mind, so think not necessarily just your true basic 401(k) plans and retirement plans, but try to take more of a work/life balance approach, which is a little more New Age, extending from what COVID brought us,” Royal said.

Prospective new hires commonly share copies of their current benefit package during the negotiation process. Those copies are a valuable resource for employers to compare their benefit package with local competitors.

Employers should offer continuous education around benefits. It is very important for employers to make sure that their employees know who they should contact if they have questions, where they should go, or how they can find out what they need to know.

Dialogue is important, such as lunch-and-learns and setting aside time for discussion, so that employees feel empowered to be able to take advantage of their benefits. Employers should make sure that employees know what’s available to them because today’s work environment is very competitive, and sometimes the menu of options for an employer can make or break whether they will be able to attract and retain talent.

“Because now, post-COVID, you and I can choose to work for anyone around the country if not the world,” Royal said. “The competitive landscape has really changed the dynamic to maybe push a little more of the power to the employee compared to what it has been in the past. It’s all the more important for the employer to hone in on what they’re offering, why they’re offering it, and creating that buy-in and alignment from their existing workforce, hopefully to drive future growth.”

A Changing Landscape

Regulation and tax law changes are constantly impacting benefits.

On the employer side it could be regulations around the number of employees who could be covered in a specific plan or the number of plans or types of plans that need to be offered.

On the employee side there are always tax law changes concerning the contribution levels and amounts, such as what can go into a 401(k) plan or a SIMPLE retirement plan, and what can be contributed from an HSA and FSA perspective.