Employee Benefits for Start Ups

You might have an idea that start up culture sees every employee in a small business being wooed by the pool table and free beers, however, a recent 2017 employee benefit survey from Untangl has show than 70% of employees want benefits to be provided by their employees with ‘traditional’ offerings being the best received – with 77% interested in pensions (even from 18 years old) through to healthcare and wellbeing initiatives.

The survey, that looked at 200 employees working at startups and with smaller employers showed that 50% of employees said they got benefits from their employers, up from 46% in an identical 2016 survey, yet 70% of those asked felt that benefits should be offered by their employers. The highest ranked benefits in terms of importance were pensions, then private healthcare and well being.

Compared to the 2016 survey, private healthcare cover has risen one place, overtaking well being benefits and now ranks in second place. Shopping discounts are seen as least important with only 26% of employees rating them as very important. This matches the 2016 results run by Untangl – an interesting development that shows either the marketplace isn’t moving, or employee benefits has shifted from an end recipient perspective. Flexitime was also a clear winner on the employees’ wish list. Compared to the 2016 survey responses, there was no sign of gyms and career development entering the survey results.

Richard Stewart, Co-Founder and CEO of Untangl explains

“The survey suggests that, far from being disinterested in benefits, employees at startups value them just like other employees. And it also suggests that the traditional benefits, like pensions and healthcare, are important. Age appears to have little impact on the results. 77% of 18-34 year olds rating pensions as very important. The same trend continues with private healthcare, with 41% of employees in the 18-34 age range rating it as very important. After all, employees are people and people have similar issues relating to health and support irrespective of the size of their employer.

Workplace pensions will be in place at all employers by 2018 – it will be interesting to see if other benefits start to become common too, especially as access to simple, low cost packages are now more easily available to employers of all sizes. The main reason for not offering benefits, according to employees, was that their employers could not afford them at the moment. This is the same order as our 2016 survey, although the amount of employees saying their employer doesn’t care has dropped to 12% from 27% which is a positive sentiment and one we hope to see drop further in our 2018 survey. We believe the right benefits packages are the very best way to achieve employee engagement and to really improve retention and productivity in the workplace.”

 

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