BNI 834: Business Matters 125 - Employee Benefits

Summary

Summary of Podcast Episode: BNI 834: Business Matters 125 - Employee Benefits

Podcast Information:

• Title: BNI & The Power of One
• Host/Author: Tim Roberts
• Episode: BNI 834: Business Matters 125 - Employee Benefits
• Release Date: July 10, 2025
• Description: This episode delves into the critical aspect of employee benefits, exploring strategies to attract and retain top talent through comprehensive benefit packages. Hosts Tim Roberts and Michael Martin discuss practical tips, share personal experiences, and provide actionable insights tailored for businesses of all sizes.

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Introduction

In this insightful episode, Tim Roberts and Michael Martin engage in a comprehensive discussion about the significance of employee benefits in today's competitive hiring landscape. With the backdrop of increasing layoffs and a surplus of available talent, the duo emphasizes the necessity for businesses to offer attractive benefit packages to secure and maintain a dedicated workforce.

The Importance of Employee Benefits

Tim Roberts initiates the conversation by highlighting the evolving nature of employee expectations. He underscores that beyond competitive salaries, benefits such as healthcare and time off are paramount in attracting and retaining employees. Roberts notes,

"We have been talking about the importance of hiring and getting good talent... hiring is probably a part of that we talked about in the last podcast. It's been a big part of what we've done." [00:54]

Roberts points out the increasing competition in hiring due to widespread layoffs, especially in the tech industry, making the job market more favorable for candidates. This shift necessitates that employers rethink their benefits strategies to stay competitive.

Structuring Benefit Packages

The conversation transitions into the practical aspects of designing benefit packages. Michael Martin shares his approach to determining which benefits to offer, emphasizing the balance between what employees value most and what the company can afford. He states,

"We always try to say, what's the most important, what are the things that are most important to people..." [03:21]

Roberts adds that while healthcare (medical, dental, vision) and time off are universally prioritized, the specifics can vary based on company size and financial capacity. He recounts his experience implementing comprehensive medical benefits even when not legally required, driven by employee interest:

"We put a program in place that was for that... we did medical, dental, vision, life insurance, you know, we did those types of things." [04:25]

Types of Employee Benefits

The hosts delve deeper into various types of benefits, discussing both traditional offerings and innovative perks:

• Healthcare Coverage: Roberts emphasizes the importance of providing robust healthcare options and explains different models, such as self-insured plans where the company covers all costs through a broker.

• Time Off: Both hosts agree that vacation time is highly valued, especially among younger employees. Martin shares strategies to encourage utilization of vacation days, including setting expectations and fostering a culture that prioritizes work-life balance.

  "They never see it as a line item on their check... it's like we're putting this money towards you too." [09:32]

• Flexible Work Arrangements: Innovations like Flex Fridays are discussed, where employees can take alternate days off during specific seasons to accommodate personal needs, fostering trust and autonomy.

• Additional Perks: Profit sharing, bonuses, and company-specific benefits (e.g., free tax services for employees of an accounting firm) are highlighted as ways to enhance compensation packages without solely increasing salaries.

Adapting Benefits to Company Size

Roberts and Martin explore how benefit offerings can be tailored based on the size and financial health of the company. Smaller businesses might leverage cooperative insurance programs to access better rates, while larger companies have more flexibility to offer comprehensive packages. Roberts advises:

"You can find ways that you can do really cool things and they may not be necessarily financial or time off... there's a value to that." [20:55]

Communication and Education

A significant portion of the discussion focuses on the necessity of effectively communicating benefits to employees. Roberts advocates for transparency in how benefits are structured and their financial implications, ensuring that employees understand the true value of what is being offered. He remarks,

"Many potential employees have no understanding at all as to how much benefits cost... we want you to take it, because we know you can't be of service to us at your best capacity without recharging the tanks." [09:32]

Leveraging Professional Support

The hosts recommend engaging with HR consultants and insurance brokers to navigate the complexities of employee benefits. Tim Roberts underscores the value of professional guidance in ensuring compliance and optimizing benefit packages:

"I would highly recommend everybody get in touch with a, an expert in the field on it because it matters." [14:12]

Best Practices and Personal Experiences

Throughout the episode, both hosts share personal anecdotes and best practices. For instance, Martin recounts a successful implementation of Flex Fridays, which allowed employees to enjoy extended weekends during peak family seasons, enhancing overall job satisfaction and productivity.

Roberts also highlights the importance of phased implementation of benefits for growing businesses, advising clear communication about future offerings to maintain employee trust and anticipation.

Conclusion

In wrapping up, Tim Roberts and Michael Martin reiterate the critical role of employee benefits in fostering a motivated and loyal workforce. They encourage business owners to thoughtfully design their benefits packages, considering both employee needs and company capabilities. Emphasizing that well-structured benefits not only attract top talent but also contribute to long-term business success, the hosts leave listeners with actionable strategies to elevate their employee benefits offerings.

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Key Takeaways:

• Healthcare and Time Off: Fundamental benefits that are highly valued by employees.
• Flexible and Innovative Perks: Tailoring benefits to meet diverse employee needs enhances job satisfaction.
• Effective Communication: Educating employees about the value and utilization of benefits is essential.
• Professional Guidance: Engaging HR consultants and brokers can streamline the benefits management process.
• Phased Implementation: Gradually introducing benefits can align with company growth and financial stability.

Notable Quotes:

• "We have to take very good care of your people so that they take very good care of you and the company." — Michael Martin [02:33]
• "You can find something that fits... that fits." — Michael Martin [07:55]
• "It's not about just offering it and hoping you don't have to do anything else." — Tim Roberts [18:45]
• "If you're thinking you're too small to offer any of that, you're thinking small." — Michael Martin [19:20]

This episode serves as a comprehensive guide for business owners seeking to enhance their employee benefits programs, providing both strategic insights and practical advice to navigate the complexities of modern workforce management.

Transcript

[A]

Welcome back. The Business Matters podcast part of Being I Power of One with me, Michael Martin.

[B]

Morning everybody.

[A]

How are you?

[B]

Doing good, Doing good.

[A]

Back to rain for our week.

[B]

Back to rain where we are. We've kind of, we had our first weekend without rain and I think 20 weeks or something.

[A]

That's crazy. Hopefully we're in a golf tournament tomorrow together, so hopefully it's nice out for tomorrow.

[B]

We are, yeah, it's supposed to be nice. Forecast is looking good.

[A]

Yeah, be a little wet after today, but that's fine. We, we didn't get any questions submitted, but again, as always, if you have a business related topic that's, you know, outside of bni, that's perfectly fine. That's why we do this. Go to bnipowerofone.com let us know. But one thing we have been talking about Michael's throughout is, you know, the importance of hiring and getting good talent and, and thinking about growth and all these kind of things. And we're in the second half and we started talking about like thinking about where you're going in 2026 and what are you going to do now. And hiring is probably a part of that we talked about in the last podcast. It's been a big part of what we've done. What we've never really talked about is we've talked a lot about hiring the right people and interviews and all that. We've never really spent any time talking about. I'm curious what you guys used to do around benefit packages when it comes to hiring and the things that we need to start thinking about offering and what can we afford to offer that helps not only attract but retain talent? Because I think hiring as is going to get more and more competitive. You see articles all over the place now. Big layoffs at big tech companies. And that's just the beginning of certain things. It's usually as a trickle down effect. So that means hiring will become more. There'll be a lot of people out there too. So. Yeah, so I, I figured we'd just start there, you know, kind of thinking about what was your thought? Probably you've got different levels of experience with that from international conglomerate levels to more local but good size stuff. And we, we've got ours. What was kind of the thought process when looking at these packages? You know, was there a priority? Did you ever find that there was a certain thing like, all right, we have to offer this, cause this is the most important thing, like where'd you start?

[B]

Well, I mean, I think started with the basic premise that you have to take very good care of your people so that they take very good care of you and the company. And then figuring out, you know, where you are financially and what you can afford. You know, people, people listening are going to be different circumstances. If they've only got a very small staff and limited revenue, what they can offer as rewards and incentives and benefits and perks are going to be very different than a larger company with a larger revenue stream. But what we always try to say is, you know, what, what's the most important, what are the things that are most important to people and what, what my experience, and it's not necessarily universal was around healthcare and time off.

[A]

Yep.

[B]

Those were kind of the, the two big ones that people are tend to have front of mind. You know, am I gonna have healthcare if I need it, medical, dental, vision, and am I gonna get time off to kind of recharge and get away? And you know, as, as time has gone on, I've been involved in different things and implementing those types of packages when I was at the mortgage business, you know, got them signed up for medical care for the very first time. And we weren't under any legal obligation to do it. We were under the threshold that the Fed and the state sets for mandatory coverage. But you know, the owner thought this is something that we really should be doing. It's what the staff is most interested in when we're talking about what could we be doing better. So we put a program in place that was for that. In that case, it was less about, you know, scheduled time off and more about getting those types of benefits. So we did medical, dental, vision, life insurance, you know, we did those types of things.

[A]

And when you say that, I think some people get confused just around that package. There's one thing where you can offer availability to programs and plans. Right. And maybe it's discounted because it's a group versus individual.

[B]

Correct.

[A]

Then there's, you could contribute towards whatever their costs are to the highest level would be like, we pay the cost of that. Where did you guys kind of fall in that line?

[B]

I, I've been all over the board. I've been at companies where I never paid a nickel.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And neither did anybody else. Neither did anybody else. And I've been at companies where there was, you know, a shared expense, reduced coverage costs, you know, but a shared expense on coverages, things like that. I've been also self insured where you do it through a broker to handle all of the kind of what's now the HIPAA rules and all of that, but we ended up paying for everything no matter what the thing was.

[A]

So as an employee you're saying you paid for it?

[B]

Yeah, so we did it as a broker. So as an employee we didn't pay anything. But the company ended up, because it was self insured, ended up paying everybody's costs ultimately in the end. So there's different ways to kind of skin the cat based on your, based on kind of your individual situation. The nice thing about today, and this is why it's important, I, I think, I think people are looking for healthcare coverage and quality of life and within quality of life is your vacation. You know, holidays like, just like whether you recognize federal holidays or not. Because as you know, there's a lot of businesses that are closed, but there's a lot of businesses that are open. Most of them are open on those holidays other than a couple a year.

[A]

Right.

[B]

That one seems to take off like, you know, Christmas, fourth of July. Almost everybody's not working, but there are a lot of people working retail and on and on and on. So it's those types of things. Maternity leave, paternity leave, those are the things I think people are looking for the most. And the good news is, regardless of the size of your company, with the advent of cooperative insurance and cooperative coverages, where, you know, 10 small companies can band together and get a negotiated, you know, discount on it coverages, that's something that you can get involved in for a very low cost to your company and a lower cost to your employees than they might get on the open market or the exchange or however they're going through. And it's important, I think just as a little sidebar, we still have yet to see if there's going to be an impact to those programs right. Under the current administration. So if you're somebody that wants to maybe offer participation in a program like that, now's the time to start doing some research. And the best way I would say to go to that is find your local broker.

[A]

Medical insurance expert.

[B]

Yeah, they can kind of. And I'm sure like in BNI you probably have those in your, in every chapter. So I would be talking to them about what you can be doing now to put things in play. So, you know, it's not necessarily those types of perks that you offer. A, when you're trying to hire the right people or B trying to keep the right people. Those are things you can do if you're a three person operation or a 300 person operation. Yeah, I think it's you can find, you know, something that. That fits. Yeah, that's the healthcare side of it.

[A]

Yeah. And. And the vacation side of it, too. I think that's a big part. You know, and one thing we've been running into that I've been better at is also paying attention to who's utilizing benefits, because you can offer them, and if people aren't aware, they might. That brings little value or if they're not utilizing. So we had one who I, like, forced to go on vacation. I was like, you need to tell me the dates you're going on vacation, like right now. And they're like, oh, my God, I can go. I'm like, yeah. You get, like, you know, these number of weeks and you're not using them. And you're telling everybody how exhausted you are and, like, how much you're working. It's like, I'm not gonna. Like, nobody's telling you when to do it, but, like, if you don't use it, you lose it and you need to use it. And so. And even just that conversation, there was like, a level of gratitude, like, oh, my God, thank you. It's like, no, no. Like, this is your. Like, this is part of it. I'm just basically yelling at you as a it to be like, take this.

[B]

This is an important part. Because it's interesting during the hiring process when people are asking about these types of things. Do you offer this or that, you know, or do you have family leave, do you know, etc. Etc. If you offer these programs, you got to really tout and go, yeah, you know, like, for vacation time, we want you to take it. We expect you to take it, because we know you can't be of service to us at your best capacity without recharging the tanks. And then you also have to be careful, like, how much the value is. Like, there's also a financial value. Right. So when you're hiring somebody, you're talking about salary. When you come to benefits, like, a lot of times, potential employees have no understanding at all as to how much benefits cost.

[A]

No clue.

[B]

So, you know, they don't understand that there's, you know, like, in our state in New Hampshire, you pay a payroll tax which supports, you know, workers comp. And a bunch of other types of things. They don't understand that because they never see it as a line item on their check.

[A]

Right.

[B]

And they never would have to think about it. But you, as a business owner are very.

[A]

Oh, my God. I can't tell you how many conversations I've had with not my, even my employees, just people who are general employees somewhere and they like want to talk about like oh, you know, I need to, it's like, do you know how much money it costs your company to pay you the money they pay you? They're like, well my salary, I'm like, no, no, no, like levels above that, my friend. No idea.

[B]

And, and, and that's the important of explaining like how much like if you're going to do company offered or company paid medical insurance, what you end up needing to do is with the help of your insurance provider or the, or the broker agent that's working with you. And we did this very successfully when I've implemented it is like you get kind of the cost. Like hey, if you were to do this on your own, here's what it would cost. If you participate in our plan, here's what it's going to cost you. So you know, you can kind of show the math. Right. And you can also say if the company's going to pay a percentage of it, then here's the percentage company's paying. So that's kind of like that's how we value you. Right. So we're putting this money towards you too. Same thing with a 401k. If you're doing a company match, you have to explain the mathematics to people so that they really understand what it is. Because a lot of times they look at it as well, it's my money and they don't see that the company's actually contributing to.

[A]

Oh my God. I've had that conversation just yesterday too. Especially in our younger generation. It goes back to the why they don't, I don't understand why they don't teach basic finance in high school. Yeah, like just to understand some of these things, like how to run a checking account, kind of financing. But like what these benefit plans do and like the time value money. So because again I go to, I look at like we do a 401k and we do a match. Now if you're a business, so you might be like that's expensive. You have to keep in mind like you're also your own personal benefits and plans. Like you can't do certain things unless you offer it to people. So you also get the benefit of like being able to contribute to your 401k, contribute to a SEP, IRA, whatever it is. But you got to be, you can't do like I'm going to do it for me and screw the rest. That doesn't fly. Yeah, but yeah, just especially our Generation literally sitting down with a couple of my employees and being like, you need to contribute to the 401k. And they're like, why? And I'm like, because you're so young. Let me show you the math. Let me show you what this means for you in the future and showing them how by putting this amount of money, it's actually this amount of money because I'm matching. And then over 40 years, look what happens. Kind of thing.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And it's. You just see their eyes bug out of their head because nobody's ever had that conversation with them.

[B]

And I'm always like, wouldn't you like to have that chunk of money when you decide, you know, when you're 59 and a half.

[A]

Right, right.

[B]

And you can keep it in there and it can keep growing for the rest of your life and you can use it for all kinds of things. Yeah, it's. But people, I think employers don't. If you, you usually, if you have an HR department, they do a really good job of like sitting people down and explaining.

[A]

You got to be really kind of probably big to.

[B]

Yeah. But if you don't, if you're your own HR person, you have to kind of cut like anything else, come up with a story about how you're going to explain it. And I also want to caution, like, we've thrown out a bunch of things, 401k, family leave, medical, dental, vacation, on and on and on and on. You don't have to eat the chicken whole. Right. You can, you can kind of phase in certain things. But when you phase in things, if you really have a goal of offering all kinds of a suite of benefits, but you're not in a financial position to do it all now because you're still trying to grow. Just explain that. Just say, hey, listen, we're going to phase this one in this year and then we're going to, hopefully, if we reach these goals, which you're a part of, we're going to kind of get to this next thing. And then if we reach those goals, we're going to kind of get to this next thing. So that you give them a plan over three or four years, they can suddenly have a really great suite of benefits that they're working for hard to make happen for themselves and the rest of the team, they're in. And that will ultimately lead to much higher, you know, bottom line revenues. Top line and bottom line revenues. And that's kind of where you would fund these things from.

[A]

Yeah. I would also tell you just two Two main points. One is there are so many great independent HR consulting companies now.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

It is worth the money and time to sit with them and lay out all of these things. I, the amount of small businesses I see that don't have an employee handbook is astonishing.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And that's a really important thing to have for compliance, for legal, for all kinds of different things. And that's where you lay out all these things. So it would be highly worth your time and your investment to sit down with somebody and even just start having these conversations about what is down the line, what is the potential, what does it look like, how do you offer it? Get a handbook. Even if the handbook is like five pages to start and it grows over time, like you're going to want to have that when you start hiring somebody.

[B]

Right, Right.

[A]

The other thing is to me, what I've learned and I think is probably the easiest thing to give is the vacation time. I think it's the most valued one right now for a lot of people, especially younger generation. A lot of these people, some of them are still on their parents health insurance for Christmas. They could stay until they're 25 or whatever. But for all levels, I think that time away is a really big thing and found a lot of small business owners who are really stinging on that. And for, to me it's just like really, is that week extra week or extra few days? Yeah. I mean like think of the value in return in terms of like you said, recharging, getting the most out of your people. You can't just burn them out. Eventually they might still be working, but they're less effective and efficient for you. So there's that costing. But just again in, in talent retention. Right. Like, yeah, I'll give you, if it's between me and another company, I'll give you an extra week. You know, like what's that ultimately going to cost?

[B]

Yeah. I mean and a lot of times people just want to have that in the bank in case they need it. And it doesn't necessarily mean that they're going to use it.

[A]

A ton of my members don't use.

[B]

All use it, use it, use it if you got it. But you know, you could do things like Flex Fridays. You know, we used to have a thing when and when I first started out at the first company I worked for, career wise, we did a thing where in the summertime and this was mostly to accommodate kind of families with kids. Yes, kids are out of school. Was that every other Friday you could have off if you worked the Extra eight hours into the other nine days of the two week pay cycle.

[A]

Oh, wow, that's kind of so hard to track.

[B]

It was neat because then it was like, and then it was like, well, does it have to be the Friday? Can it be a Monday? If people needed a Monday for some reason, I'm like, sure, like, doesn't, doesn't really matter. It could be a Wednesday. All you got to do is, you know, and we trusted that the managers of each department were just. But like, hey, listen, we're not going to time clock this. We're not going to do all that kind of stuff. Just work with your manager, work it out with them and just, you know, make sure everyone's in the loop so there's no surprises that someone was expected to be in for a meeting and they're not there or whatever it may be, but we're not gonna, you know, just, just go do it. And that's also, you know, empowering your managers or putting trust in them to kind of monitor a program like that. But it was nice because from Memorial Day to Labor Day, when kids went back to school, you could basically have four day weekends on the holiday. July 4th, Labor Day, Memorial Day, like you could do things. And that was a nice benef for people to be like, you know, it's, I mean you looked at it as you got four days off. That's almost a week.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Even though there was a weekend in there, people mentally were like, oh my.

[A]

Oh no, you can feel way better. Yeah.

[B]

Was fantastic. You know, and so, you know, and depending on if there's seasonality to your business, you could offer it in the seasons that work for you. But I think, I think having things available for people again, if you're really thinking about your business as a long term annuity, all those things that get in your way of implementing them really in the long term don't mean a whole lot in terms of negative impact. In fact, there's probably none. But there's a massive upside over the time that you have them in place for your people. You know, when they talk about, well my, if they're out in the world going, oh yeah, they take really good care of our people, you know, they take care of us. I don't have to worry about anything. You know, I, I think that's kind of service leadership number one in terms of who's running the company, but gets your reputation out there in a really good way.

[A]

Yeah. And I think that goes full circle to what we're talking about is pay attention yourself to what people are using or not using and educate them on why they should. I think just even having that conversation with people to say, hey, do you know you have this vacation time like shows that you care about their business. Not like, hey, I'm going to offer you this and I'm never going to talk about and hope you don't use it kind of thing. Right?

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Because that's just kind of like, well, you didn't use it, it's your fault. It's like maybe they didn't know or maybe they weren't aware or whatever. I think that shows that caring piece too. And then that builds that culture and that. Yeah, that's where you start really retaining.

[B]

Listen, you're gonna have different, you might have to do different things for different people. If you're trying to recruit, you know, a, an executive to the company that's seasoned, that you know is going to have a day one impact because they're bringing knowledge and connections and all that kind of stuff. You know, if, if you're stuck on, well, everybody only gets a two week vacation, including me, you're gonna lose.

[A]

Yep.

[B]

Because what that person can like if they say, yeah, I want six to eight weeks off and on, it's an extreme example. If they say six to eight weeks, you just have to understand that in those other 40 something weeks of the year, they're outperforming everybody.

[A]

Right.

[B]

So it's not going to hurt you for to let them recharge their batteries every 60 days.

[A]

Right. It's just not because they're working 60 hour weeks, 80 hour weeks. So in the times they are there, you know, I mean, I mean, so.

[B]

You know, you, you ha. You can't be kind of stuck in your own thinking about, well, you know, I've been doing this for myself and that's all I'm going to do for other people. You also have to look as an owner. Are you treating yourself right and all of this too Right. You know. Right. You know, you do have to take the. I have an ownership share at stake that no one else likely has. We could talk about that. Like, do you have, do you for the right people, do you give them some sort of participation in the company? And there's ways of doing that besides 401k. You could do profit sharing, you could do, you know, you do bonuses, you do, you know, all kinds of things for people who merit it. But I think if you're, if you're, if you think you're too small to offer any of that you're thinking small, right. So think a little bit bigger. There are ways that you can do really cool things and they may not be necessarily financial or time off. If you offer a certain service, you could offer that service for nothing to your people if they need it. You know, that's a benefit. You know, if you're an accountant and you have a whole staff, you should say, hey listen, we're going to do your taxes for free every year.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

That you're an employee. There's a benefit there that's hundreds of dollars. Okay. So that goes up into what their compensation package. You know what I mean? Like, you know, if you're a plumber and you're working for a plumber, obviously. Yeah. You can use our company discount to get parts you need. If you're doing a repair at your own house or if you need the tools or I know most of these guys have their own tools, but you know, whatever, that, that's fine. You know, use our company account, get your discount and, and that's fine. You know, I mean that's, there's a value to that. So you have to kind of be able to explain it. And I think no matter what your situation is, you can find ways of giving your staff something beyond their wages that makes sense.

[A]

Yep. Just take some time to think about. And again, I would highly recommend everybody get in touch with a, an expert in the field on it because it matters. It definitely helps. All right.

[B]

Yeah. And, and let me finish with this Tim, because I wanted to say it before. I 100 agree. There's lots of great ones out there. And one of the great benefits if you're to kind of farming out your HR activities. And a lot of them, it's not a big nugget every month is that for that annualized payment it's get almost getting like a full time person that's not in your office very much. But they act as a great buffer between, you know, yourself from a compliance perspective and the staff.

[A]

Right.

[B]

So they eliminate a lot of hot water situations you can get into. Like if you're not conversant in these things, it's nice to have that person kind of say, hey listen, I hear you talk to so and so who's usually on retainer and, and they'll straighten it out because. And just say I'm not an expert in this, but they are, so go with them.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Give them your employees, that avenue, that outside advocate that is working for them.

[A]

Yep. There's a lot of them now that offer like monthly, you know, you can just do like a, it's like a subscription plan type of monthly thing.

[B]

Yeah, I paid 500amonth. Yeah, it's worth one and, and at the end of the year it was worth it. It was a great investment and took a lot of work off our hands and got got the compliance stuff nailed down.

[A]

Yep. Awesome. All right. As always, love to hear from you Getting questions, topics, etc. Go to bnipower of1.com Leave it there and I will talk to you again.

[B]

RA.