What Kind of Benefits Should You Be Offering?

Is Your Benefits Package Competitive?

Your GovCon organization might be a spectacular place to work. The company culture may be the most fantastic company culture of all time, providing nonstop fulfillment and happiness to all your employees. That’s great, but if you aren’t backing it up with a competitive benefits package, you’re still going to have trouble attracting and retaining talent.

Benefits are one of – if not THE – most powerful factors when it comes to attracting people to your company. In fact, recent studies show that half or more working people would leave their current job for one that simply offered better benefits. So, if you’re not offering the right benefits, you’re at a real disadvantage.

But what kind of benefits should you be offering?

Find Out What Your People Want

The best way to find out what sort of benefits your employees actually want is to ask them. You can do this through surveys, focus groups, or casual conversation. Work with your HR department to come up with a list of benefits that would be appealing to your employees based on the feedback received, and then narrow it down to the ones that would be most feasible for your company.

Remember, not all benefits are equally important to employees. For example, free parking isn’t a benefit for people who take the bus or work remotely. But something like a wellness program could have a lot wider appeal.

Let’s start with the basics.

Common Standard GovCon Benefits

While the extra stuff can go a long way to attracting talent and setting your GovCon business up for success, you have to make sure you’ve got the basics covered.

Here are some of the most common benefits that modern GovCons offer:

Health Insurance: This is non-negotiable in today’s job market, not to mention an ACA requirement if you are over 50 employees. If you don’t offer health insurance, you’re going to have a hard time attracting top talent.

Dental and Vision Insurance: This is often bundled with health insurance, but not always. If you want to attract employees, you need to offer at least some basic dental and vision coverage.

Retirement Benefits: Employers are increasingly expected to help their employees plan for retirement. At the very least, you should offer a 401(k) plan.

Paid Time Off: Employees need time to relax and recharge, and they shouldn’t have to worry about using up all their vacation days. Make sure you offer a competitive amount of paid time off so your employees can enjoy a healthy work-life balance.

Sick Days: In addition to vacation days, employees need to be able to take time off when they’re actually sick. No one wants to come into work sick and risk getting everyone else sick, so offer a reasonable number of sick days as part of your benefits package. If you have Service Contract Act (SCA) employees, you will be required to offer sick leave.

Life Insurance: This is another benefit that nearly all employers offer. Employees want to know that their loved ones will be taken care of financially if something happens to them.

Flexible Spending Account: Offering an FSA allows employees to use these tax-free funds to pay for unreimbursed health or dependent care expenses and is very low cost to the employer.

If you’re not offering these benefits, you’re already well behind your competitors. But like we said, the basics are just the beginning. To really set your company apart, you need to offer some unique benefits that will appeal to your employees.

Fringe Benefit Ideas for GovCons

Once you’ve got some basic benefits to offer, it’s time to start thinking about some of the more unique benefits that will really help you stand out from your competitors in the GovCon world.

Here are a few ideas to get you started:

Flexible Working Arrangements: With return-to-office policies looming over much of the workforce, allowing flexibility and considering remote and hybrid work arrangements will be received well by prospective talent.

Health Savings Account: If you offer high deductible health plans ($1500 annual deductible or higher), offering an HSA along with it is a great way to encourage your employees to participate.

Student Loan Assistance: This is a big one for recent graduates and is becoming a desired benefit in the workforce. College is expensive and in October 2023, millions of people will once again have to begin repaying their student loans after a nearly three-year payment pause due to the COVID-19 pandemic. If you can offer any sort of assistance with student loans to your workforce who may be affected by this, you’ll be in a great position to retain employees and attract recent grads.

GENEROUS PTO Policies: We already talked about the importance of offering paid time off, but you can really set your company apart by offering more generous PTO policies than your competitors. And this doesn’t necessarily mean offering them unlimited PTO as that may lead to other issues!

Childcare Assistance: Childcare is expensive, and many employees struggle to find affordable childcare options. If you can offer any sort of assistance with childcare, you’ll be in a great position to attract working parents.

Voluntary Benefits: Benefits such as Voluntary Life Insurance, Legal Service and Pet Insurance are often little to no cost to the employer and are becoming more and more popular with employees.

Commuter Benefits: Commuting can be a big expense, especially if you live in a big city. If you can offer commuter benefits, you’ll be able to attract employees who are looking to save money on their commute.

These are just a few ideas to get you started. There are endless possibilities when it comes to offering unique benefits, so get creative and see what you can come up with. The more generous and unique your benefits package is, the better your chances of attracting top talent.

Seriously, PTO! Can’t Stress This Enough

We want to hit extra hard on the importance of being competitive with your PTO offering. If you’re starting people off with 80 hours of PTO, and a competitor is offering 120 hours, why would a potential hire join your team? They wouldn’t, at least not without a significantly higher salary.

The reality is that most people would rather have more time off than more money. Studies show that 20% of employees prefer more time off over a 10% pay raise. So, if you want to attract top talent, you need to be competitive with your PTO offering.

BOOST Can Help You Attract Talent

The bottom line is this: if you want to attract top talent, you need to offer a competitive benefits package. At BOOST, we’re experts in all the ins and outs of running and succeeding as a small to mid-sized GovCon. Attracting talent is an area that a lot of contractors struggle with consistently, and we’ve made it our mission to share our knowledge and offer best practices.

We can help you determine the benefits that will attract talent. We can also help you retain the talent you have.

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