In recent research reported by Greenwald & Associates and the Employee Benefits Research Institute, more than 75 percent of working Americans said that a workplace benefits package was an important factor in deciding whether or not to take a job. Experts said that the majority of works considered health benefits the most important of the workplace benefits. They also said that many workers do not give their company’s benefits packages high ratings.
In recent years, researchers said that the overall ranking of employer benefits from an employee’s perspective has declines. However, that may be caused by other new benefits being added to the survey as choice options. For example, the new survey included paid time off as a benefit in a survey choice question. For the past 20 years, EBRI has been conducting surveys about the importance of employer-sponsored benefits to working Americans. Their purpose in doing this is to determine the role of benefits, job change and job choice over the years.
These survey finding came from the 2015 Health and Voluntary Workplace Benefits Survey by EBRI/Greenwald & Associates. The study looked at a wide range of employer-provided benefits and issues with benefits. Although the study considered non-health benefits as well, the main focus of the study was opinions and the use of voluntary workplace benefits.
In this survey, there were several additional findings that interested researchers. When asked to rate the importance of workplace benefits as extremely important or very important in determining whether to accept or reject a job, more than 35 percent of respondents rated benefits as extremely important. Slightly more than 40 percent rated benefits as very important in affecting the ultimate decision-making process.
Researchers said that employee morale and job satisfaction were closely related, and they were both correlated with satisfaction of workplace benefits. Nearly 55 percent of the people who reported being extremely satisfied with their workplace benefits also reported being extremely satisfied with their jobs. About 20 percent of people who reported being very satisfied with their benefits were extremely satisfied with their jobs. Only about 10 percent of the individuals who reported being extremely satisfied with their jobs were somewhat satisfied or not satisfied with their workplace benefits. This clearly shows a strong relationship between offering good benefits and having a content workforce.
Researchers said that only about 30 percent of workers were somewhat satisfied with workplace benefit options, and about 20 percent reported being unsatisfied. Almost 90 percent of participants said that employer-sponsored health insurance was very important or extremely important for employers to offer. When asked about value, workers cited lower costs and having choices in their workplace voluntary benefits packages. Although some reported being comfortable in allowing employers to choose the providers for employee benefits, they also felt that having to pay the full cost for voluntary benefits would not be advantageous to them. To learn more about workplace benefits, their survey’s full report or EBR, please contact Alan Wang at (510) 654-6566.
Alan Wang is the President of UBF and serves as the lead consultant. He has delivered the UBF solution set throughout the world and is highly regarded for his areas of expertise. You can follow him on Twitter @UBFconsulting.