Alternative Compensation for Employees

• 25 % of all employees were considered “high risk” when it came to retention before COVID-19.
• Reducing employees pain points is a good alternative to increasing salary
• Engaging your workforce lowers employee turnover and increases productivity

In 2019, it was reported that 45% of employees quit their job because of pay concerns. However, is it always about the money? No, a recent Glassdoor survey showed that other factors people leave include career advancement, benefits, company culture, and location. In fact, 56% of employees say that benefits such as health care and insurance concerns kept them at their job. Given the current pandemic, this number may be even higher today.

After seeing those statistics, it may seem intuitive that offering more money and extending healthcare benefits are the only way to retain top talent, but that is not the case. Employers are looking for creative ways to retain talent. We wanted to share a few ideas:

Relieving Pain Points

What can a small business or company do if they can’t afford to pay a top salary to their employees? Find your employees pain points, alleviate them, and offer resources to address the reality of lower pay.

We recommend using surveys, employee feedback, and industry trends to try and find out what frustrates your workers. Learning what is stressing them allows you to adapt and modify benefits and job functions accordingly. For example, we know that a common trend among all workers in America is their inability to build a greater sense of security, and even if they manage to, there is a lack of financial education which leads to bad financial habits. Overall, this disconnect causes employees to be more on edge and in some cases can be extremely stressed as they are on the brink of financial ruin and in some cases resort to predatory lenders for help. In this scenario offering bonuses based on productivity, or even financial education can better prepare your workers.

Periodical check-ins with your employees and making sure you know what the hardships they are facing are will be key to helping them and developing a work environment that meets them in more ways than one. Another example of a way companies are starting to shift their efforts in supporting their employees is, mental health. Granting mental health days, similar to sick time or vacation, can have a huge impact on worker productivity according to research conducted by the World Health Organization, which showed that anxiety and depressive disorders cost more than a trillion dollars in lost productivity globally.

Engaging Your Workforce

In a 2018 Gallup Poll, 56% of all employees considered themselves disengaged from their work and out of them 73% were actively looking for a different job. Increasing engagement can come in many forms, but some of the most common are to offer your employees valuable learning opportunities, giving them the opportunity to learn which can lead to their financial success.

A tool like Onward focuses on all three of these solutions to help engage your workforce. Our employee benefit makes it seamlessly easy to save through direct deposit functionality. Financial education within the app gives employees more information on how to take control of their finances and steps they can take to save more. Lastly, personalized financial coaching allows your employees to achieve their own version of success by having a financial program tailored specifically to them and their needs.

There is no one-size-fits-all when it comes down to it. Employees and work environments differ from company to company, and due to this offering mental health days, learning opportunities, increasing benefits, or adding a financial service tool such as Onward, will separate you from your competitors and will alleviate some of the pain associated with a lower salary.