By Jordan Quigley, North American Vice President, Administrative and Customer Support Group, Robert Half
Has your turnover been ticking up while job applications slip down? It could be a result of your benefits package. When we ask our clients what they’re doing differently to attract and keep talent today, many tell us that benefits — once a relatively simple employer function — have become a critical and competitive employee engagement opportunity.
Luckily, open enrollment season is here, along with opportunities to adjust your health and wellness offerings, roll out new perks and communicate to employees what makes your company a great place to work.
So now, as predictably as pumpkin spice flavors appear on retail shelves, open enrollment tasks are landing on the desks of your HR team. In addition to reviewing health benefits, this is also the time of year when HR and benefits specialists will be absorbed in reviewing the entire benefits strategy and exploring the marketplace of new products. According to the Salary Guide From Robert Half, 83% of HR managers have added new perks in response to the hiring market.
The season is short, HR workloads are peaking and companies have never been more pressured to get it right. Have you considered giving your team a helping hand? Or several?
You certainly won’t be alone; 61% of HR hiring managers plan to increase their use of contract talent in the second half of 2023.
A call for reinforcements
Open enrollment is a great time to leverage contract HR and administrative talent in your business — for the season — or any reason. Here are four reasons outsourcing some (or all) of your benefits tasks can help elevate your employer brand:
- Employees value benefits more than ever, and they make choices accordingly. Take health insurance, for example. Research for Robert Half’s latest Salary Guide shows that health insurance is the benefit that U.S. workers want most. As for perks, employees increasingly expect to get a wide range of well-being services via their employers, such as mental health support, fitness programs and financial wellness offerings. The company that can beat another on benefits often has an edge when hiring skilled talent.
- Employees want and need more choice. Today’s workers want to select from a benefits menu that fits their age and stage of life, whether they’re beginning their careers, starting a family or nearing retirement.
- Benefits offerings have never been richer and more complex. Today, your HR team is likely to be working out benefits packages for people working remotely across the country and in states and even different countries with varying laws. At the same time, new perks and benefits are proliferating, like pet insurance, health and wellness programs, hearing care, and telemedicine. Meanwhile, providers are bringing many digital tools to the market — like apps, trackers and self-service portals to add value to their products. These trends compound the already-complicated process of choosing a comprehensive benefits strategy for the company.
- Benefits programs today should be explicitly designed and updated to be customizable to employees. A great way to make sure that happens is to use established metrics to reveal groups of employees who might be erroneously overlooked or excluded because of benefits affordability, accessibility, or ability to meet their physical, mental and emotional well-being needs. "A contract professional skilled in data analysis can step in to help provide this type of assessment for you."
Among the most commonly outsourced roles for open enrollment are:
- Compensation and benefits administrators
- Customer support specialists
- Data entry specialists
- Enrollment specialists
- HR assistants, generalists and recruiters
- Member services specialists
How much time and effort could you save?
By leveraging contract talent to support your open enrollment tasks, you can:
- Get the most value for your budget
- Customize your benefits cost-effectively
- See increased uptake of benefits from your employees
- Ensure more effective benefits communication with employees
- Make data-driven decisions
- Ensure all your employees are being served inclusively and equitably
A little preparation can go a long way if your organization is burdened by too much work or too few workers. Apply the strategy above to find the best seasonal employees who can provide extra support when there is a temporary increase in work — and take the load off you and the rest of your team.
Follow Jordan Quigley on LinkedIn.
