The evolving employee benefits landscape
Gone are the days when a hefty salary and a couple of weeks of paid time off were enough to attract and retain talent. Emerging from the pandemic, employees want more meaningful and more holistic benefits By Rachel Ranosa
C OVER
STORY
T
40
he war for talent rages on and employers who are ramping up their arsenal of employee benefits are winning the battle of 2021. In a pandemic economy, companies are seeing employees rise to the occasion, working through the crisis and ensuring business continuity. But employers that fail to take care of their people – in a time of adversity, most especially – risk running their enterprise aground. Without great talent, no business strategy will succeed. Without dedicated
| november 2021
talent, no business strategy will last. Inspiring loyalty and commitment among workers matters now more than ever, as businesses face a shortage of talent amid intense competition to find and retain the best of the best. It's a symbiosis. For employees to remain loyal, talent leaders will need to focus on employee wellbeing over anything. Workers today aren't just looking for greener pastures – they are on the market to find better work/life balance,
as well as meaningful and impactful work, as a result of the pressures of the pandemic. Those who are overworked, undervalued and left to churn out lowlevel tasks – all of which run counter to the idea of wellbeing at work – are often the ones leading the exodus of talent in what has come to be known as the 'Great Resignation'.
Preventing an exodus of talent
In the US alone, a record 20 million people have quit their jobs since April this year, with the majority coming from the highpressure sectors of technology and health care, as well as the high-risk environments of retail and hospitality, statistics from the US Department of Labor reveal. Over in Europe, an estimated 14 million have opted out of the labour force, neither working nor looking for work, ever since the pandemic began, data from the OECD suggest. These movements in the job market illustrate,
