What’s the benefit in getting personal?

Everyone loves those morning news segments about some company’s incredibly lavish workplace culture.. You’ve seen them usually highly-capitalized startups and tech firms sporting basketball hoops in the break room, on-premises puppy daycare, full-time masseuses and foosball tables where conference tables usually are.

These extreme examples show how far some companies will go to retain employees and attract top talent. They’re spectacular to behold, until you remember that those companies and their culture are your competition for good people.

It becomes a classic David vs. Goliath battle for talent. Matching a better-funded company’s salary may not be enough. Can you successfully market your more intimate, more personalized company culture against on-demand frozen yogurt and a personal concierge?

Make company culture part of your business plan

The fact is that, outrageous or not, employee perks and benefits in short, what a lot of employees consider your company culture should be a line item in your business plan. And like any other item, it has to be planned and managed in order to keep its costs and benefits in line with each other. It’s a tough addition to an already over-extended CEO’s to-do list, but doing it right can be critical to your long-term success.

I know from personal experience that the first impulse is to offer as much love as you can, as often as you can Friday cocktail hours, after-work get-togethers, and so forth. But I found that the law of diminishing returns kicks in pretty quickly. I eventually found the right balance between frequency, cost and impact I actively manage our culture to yield the best return.

Focus your attention where it matters most

For small and mid-sized businesses, the market advantage lies in your ability to do more with less. And yes, that means more focus on the work and less on the play. But even so, addressing, top cultural factors that employees care about most only incurs minimal time and cost. Managing culture in this way offers the best return on your investment, because it mostly requires only your time and thought.

ABOUT GLOBAL BENEFITS GROUP

Global Benefits Group has always been on the leading edge of insurance brokerage and technology. As the industry’s quintessential Evolved Broker, our hybrid approach delivers the white-glove customer service you’d expect from a boutique firm, with state-of-the-art administration services for benefits enrollment. Considered early movers on this evolved broker concept more than 13 years ago, Global Benefits Group re-branded in 2003 to reflect our leadership position.

Global Benefits Group’s expert negotiators consistently outperform the marketplace, empowering you to offer the best benefits to your employees at the best possible cost. It’s all about keeping you cutting-edge and competitive. Outsourcing your benefits administration to Global Benefits Group improves accuracy and saves you time by helping you keep all employee data in one place. It also provides standardized-processes that you can adopt, giving your organization more structure than you may have previously enjoyed. Because the data is centralized, there is no need to duplicate the data in order to use it for multiple tasks. Our solution standardizes many HR administrative processes, including: adding a new hire; promoting, disciplining, transferring, or terminating an employee; tracking Family and Medical Leave and Leave of Absence; assigning or changing benefits; changing salary or grade of an employee; safety reporting.