Diversifying your employee benefits scheme

Diversity and inclusion within the workplace is an initiative that’s commonly found in workplace policies regarding the recruitment process, workplace operations and workplace relationships. However, what about a company’s employee benefits scheme?

You shouldn’t overlook incorporating diversity and inclusion initiatives within your company’s employee benefits package! In fact, if you’re wondering how to do this, in this blog, we’ll cover 5 tips on how you can diversify your employee benefits scheme:

Cultivate safe spaces for all employees

Ensuring that all employees feel welcome and safe within the workplace is important when it comes to diversity and inclusion. Particularly, happier employees thrive which contributes to overall business success. For example, nursing mothers should have a space for them to comfortably pump and store breast milk – known as ‘lactation rooms’, helping them with their transition back into work. By providing nursing mothers safe spaces like these, it shows that as an employer, you’re providing sufficient support and care when it comes to their wellbeing.

Ask what employees want

If you want to diversify your company’s employee benefits scheme, it’s time to start asking questions. Create surveys to distribute to employees, asking them about their experience with the existing benefits scheme and for recommendations on how it can be improved. This is a great way to discover any flaws with the current package and better understand the needs of your employees. Using this feedback, you can then amend your employee benefits package as necessary to better suit your employees’ various needs and wants.

Offer personalised and tailored benefits

Providing flexibility regarding employee perks and benefits is a great way to diversify your benefits package. This means that instead of offering a one-size-fits-all benefits scheme, you should offer a wide range of optional benefits that employees can pick and choose from. This empowers employees to choose benefits and perks that are tailored to their individual needs and wants.

Provide high value perks for minority group employees

Employee perks that are valuable to your employees are what matters – for instance, employee insurance such as income protection insurance and life insurance. These types of insurance policies might be difficult for some employees to attain out of their own pocket, which is why being able to offer them as part of their employee benefits package can incentivise them to stay with your company. As a result, you might find that your employee retention rates start to greatly improve.

Healthcare is key

After the COVID-19 pandemic, awareness about the significance of wellbeing and health has skyrocketed – and rightfully so. Being able to prioritise the health and wellbeing of all of your employees is essential to ensuring that you’re able to minimise absenteeism and employee turnover rates. In particular, private healthcare can be beneficial for many of your employees, especially those part of a minority group who may find public healthcare inefficient.

With NHS waiting lists continuing to grow, some employees might value switching to private healthcare that gives them access to healthcare services without having to wait months. This instant access to healthcare means that they are able to get diagnosed and/or treated faster, enabling them to stay healthy and work productively.