ForConstructionPros.com

In many firms, employee benefit offerings vary little from year to year. The common mind-set is that what worked fine five or 10 years ago suits us well now too. But the needs and expectations of workers do change over time, and if the benefit package is outdated, it could be a factor in your turnover rate and in recruiting.

A big challenge to adjusting a benefit plan to best serve employees is the difficulty in finding out what they really want. The larger the firm, likely the more difficult the task.

Many companies base their benefit packages on industry benchmarks that can be tracked from industry-wide surveys. Some firms also use internal employee surveys to track trends in benefit wants and needs, and employee satisfaction.

What surveys can show

It's interesting to note that employee surveys can produce surprising results in terms of employee and employer perceptions about the working environment, salary, and benefits. A 2004 Job Satisfaction Survey highlighted some differences on the perceptions of the importance of job-satisfaction factors between employees and human resources professionals.

Each group ranked 21 factors according to their importance. Human resources managers ranked them according to what they believed employees would most value. Employees ranked "benefits" number one; HR pros ranked it number three. "Relationship with immediate supervisor" was the top choice of HR pros, while that factor ranked seventh on the employee side.