Author Archives: CorpStrat News

6 Tips to Successfully Attract and Retain Employees in 2022

The workplace has been transformed by the pandemic, now employees have higher expectations for compensation, benefits, and workplace flexibility. Due to this, employers of all sizes are facing attraction and retention challenges like never before. Compared to 2021, organizations are experiencing a 3x increase in difficulties attracting employees and a 4x increase in difficulties retaining employees.

Successful efforts to win over new employees can require investments of time and costs that are higher than ever. Most businesses don’t have a lot of resources to invest in attracting and competing with large, well-capitalized organizations so it’s time to think outside of the box. We encourage you to get creative. Don’t be afraid to risk being unique and different in order to attract the talent you need to achieve your goals.

We’ve put together our top tips to help you successfully attract and retain employees in 2022:

1. Review your Benefits

Health insurance has to be a vital part of your compensation package but don’t stop there. Build out a well-rounded benefit offering that will wow your prospective employees. Include vision, dental, life, disability, 401K plans, and more. After you put together this plan, make sure you have ways to communicate them clearly to your prospects.

2. Review Your Recruiting and Hiring Process

Make sure your recurinting and onboarding process is welcoming and engaging from beginning to end. New employees will notice the difference and it will help set the tone for their time at the company.

3. Offer Bonuses for Employee Referrals

Expand your recruiting to include your employee base. Offer employees a cash bonus for referrals that are hired to the team. If your employees love where they work, they’ll be motivated to refer their friends.

4. Focus on Developing Your Employees

Include educational reimbursements, extracurricular learning, and skill advancement opportunities in the areas of their interest.

5. Establish a Hybrid Work Environment

There’s no escaping it, flexible work environments are the new normal. Create a clear hybrid work policy that allows for flexibility between in-office and remote work when an employees’ positions allow for it.

6. Focus on Enriching Workplace Culture

Continue to work on your workplace culture for employees who come to the office. Help your team foster community by encouraging friendship. This can include free lunches, team happy hours, or company-wide social events that help to bond your staff together and build camaraderie.

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Need help with improving your company culture? Contact us at marketing@corpstrat.com

5 Tips for Bringing Your Team Back to the Office

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After over two years of working remotely, we know a lot of employers are grappling with if and how to bring their teams back into the office. They’re faced with a barrage of questions: Should they bring employees back full time? Keep them remote? Should they offer set hybrid programs or let employees decide their own schedule? The risk of losing great employees by pushing them to return to the office looms large however, full-time remote work doesn’t suit every business.

The answer is there is no right answer. It’s almost impossible to establish a protocol that makes sense for everyone. The bottom line is companies have to get creative with how they balance safety, productivity, and culture as we begin returning to the office. We do think companies will likely employ various hybrid work iterations for the foreseeable future.

Here are our best ideas to help find balance between encouraging company culture while your team is remote and building rapport back in the office:

1. Give Employees Their Own Work Spaces.

Try rewarding employees with their own work spaces as opposed to the shared work spaces that are so popular nowadays. The pandemic has created all sorts of uncertainties about touching other people’s stuff.

2. Offer up free lunches.

We know there’s “no such thing as a free lunch” but we’ve seen companies have tremendous success when they offer their employees meals as a gesture of appreciation. Sending your remote employees a voucher for a food delivery app and an invitation to join a team Zoom hang out is a great way to allow your team to interact more casually. When your team is in the office, providing free lunches allows people to connect with each other. We’ve found that this desire for connection is greater than ever since the pandemic began.

3. Create Memorable Moments to Connect

Try and use culture building opportunities as frequently as possible. This is where employers can really get creative. Consider setting up both remote and in-person fun experiences like an Escape Room or a virtual Pub Quiz. Give away memorable gifts, company merchandise, or a welcome back to the office care package so employees feel that their experience is being valued.

4. Provide Gas Cards

Send gas gift cards to anyone who comes into the office on a regular basis. Gas is expensive right now so this is an easy win because it makes employees feel valued for their efforts.

5. Use Social Media to Show Off Company Culture

Make sure your employees are proud of the team that they’re on and feel included. One way to do this is share notable team experiences on your public Social Media channels and in your internal team communications, like a Slack channel or team newsletter. You’ll be able to show the community being built back up in the office and ease the minds of employees still on the fence about returning to the office.

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Need help creating positive Company Culture? We can help with that. Contact us.

California Competes: What Is It and How Can You Benefit?

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California Competes: have you heard of it? It’s a state sponsored opportunity specifically geared towards companies located in California. The California Competes Tax Credit (CCTC) is an income tax credit available to businesses that want to relocate to California or stay and grow in California. Essentially, it’s an income tax credit available to businesses that intend to remain in California and grow their employee base over the next five years.

The CCTC is accepting applications from companies from any industry, of any size, and at any location in California. The CCTC has $180 million of credits available per fiscal year through 2022-23 with a minimum credit request of $20,000.

Credit awards are based on a number of factors such as:

Number of jobs created
Compensation paid to employees
Amount of investment
Duration of proposed project and commitment to remain in the state
Opportunity for future growth and expansion
Overall economic impact
And more

If this if of interest to you, consider submitting a business plan that includes your plan for growing your company and retaining employees in the state of California. The program will provide an income tax credit to companies that grow populations and they’ll even co-op investments in people and technology. The program opens for new applicants once a quarter.

For more information and to apply: https://business.ca.gov/california-competes-tax-credit/

What Can You Do about Rising Healthcare Costs?

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Healthcare costs are rising. Experts are predicting a 5-7% increase by the end of 2022.

Over the last couple of years during the pandemic, most people deferred health care services. Elective treatments like knee surgeries or hip replacements were either postponed by their doctor or hospital or were cancelled by the employee. Combined with the early part of the pandemic when the federal government was paying for all COVID related claims, taking employees off the liability of the insurance company, you now start to see why we’re seeing a humongous increase in consumption of healthcare across the country. Government’s no longer paying for COVID and people are beginning to access care they’d previously put off.

This increase in health insurance premiums is happening at exactly the wrong time, as employers are trying to attract and retain talent in one of the tightest labor markets ever. So, what can you do as an employer who’s looking to balance the rising costs of healthcare with wanting to provide rich benefit programs to attract and retain your staff?

Here are four strategies we think should be considered:

1. Partial Self Funding

Take a fresh look at partial self funding. This is a newer approach in California and they’ve traditionally been limited to larger employers, but they’re now being offered to companies with as low as 25 employees. In these programs, employers and the insurance company agree to share in the basic cost of care and administration, with the opportunity to reduce claims and save money. These are a great option for employers who are interested in being proactive in helping their employees be healthy, stay healthy, and manage their health.

2. Newer Companies in the Marketplace

A new insurance company has come into the marketplace and has really a different approach to offering healthcare; we think it’s what the future of healthcare looks like in this country. It may not be for everybody but for the right employer, this could be a great fit. Learn more about it here.

3. High Deductible Health Plans

HSAs and high deductible health plans, as they are referred to, are currently being used by almost 50% of employees across the nation. On the surface, these plans might seem unattractive in a tight labor market because they come with $4-5K deductibles. But there are a lot of different strategies out there an employer can put in place that can soften those deductibles. They can also put in other benefits to make up the difference, contact us to learn how.

4. Wellness Programs

No matter what industry you’re in, what size your company is, or what demographic you employ, integrating wellness programs is going to impact your population both culturally and physically. In the long run, this is going to provide more opportunities for your company to potentially leverage wellness as a cost savings tool as health plans evolve. Currently, insurance companies are talking about changing health plans to include lower rates if companies include a wellness program. It hasn’t been implemented yet but it’s on the horizon.

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Early indications are that we could see increases of up to 20% in both the employer and individual market in the coming year. That’s a huge cost. So, don’t have this conversation at renewal when you’re staring at a 20% rate increase, trying to figure out what to do. Have the conversation now so you’re working with someone you can trust who knows the market well and has a solid strategy going into the renewal.

If you’re interested in some new ideas in healthcare, consult with us today to learn more about how we can make these plans work for you and your budget. Email us at marketing@corpstrat.com or give us a call at (818) 377-7260 today.

Why Is It So Hard to Find Workers Right Now?

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Employers across the country are facing a huge issue right now: too many open positions and not enough workers.

On its face, it seems like there are simply not enough workers available for jobs, but that’s not actually the case. The unemployment rate is hovering just below 5%, translating to roughly 7.5 million unemployed Americans (source: Bureau of Labor Statistics), which tells us there are people available for work.

At the end of Summer 2021, it looked like unemployed Americans were going to return to the workforce in droves. This was when several key COVID-19 initiatives ended—expanded unemployment benefits ceased and children returned to in-person classes. Puzzlingly, while some individuals did return to work, many others quit in record numbers, leaving employers in the lurch.

Below we share what we believe is happening in the current labor market. We lay out potential reasons why individuals have been slow to return to work despite available positions. We also included some suggestions on how you can better attract some of these workers.

Factors Impacting Labor Shortage

1. Fear of Contracting COVID-19

One obvious reason for the labor situation may involve COVID-19-related fears. Some workers are simply afraid of contracting a serious case of COVID-19 at work. To some, remaining unemployed longer outweighs the risks of taking an in-person job. However, as more Americans get vaccinated, this may become less of a concern.

2. Comfortable Savings

During the pandemic, much of the country was in some sort of lockdown, with restrictions put on travel, gatherings and business operations. In effect, many activities people enjoyed were suspended for nearly a year. That meant all the money that someone might spend on eating out, going to the movies or attending concerts all went into personal savings. Plus, individuals received generous stimulus checks and had access to enhanced unemployment benefits during this time, which also contributed to savings.

Now, some workers are relying on those accrued savings to remain out of the workforce. Essentially, they are using their assets to hold out for a desirable job. Under normal circumstances, these people may have taken the first available position. But, with a savings safety net, they are able to wait longer.

3. Reprioritized Worker Desires

The COVID-19 pandemic caused workers to reevaluate their priorities, contributing to the labor shortage. Suddenly, workers began to rethink their priorities and the value of their labor. As the pandemic endured, a common thought was, “Is this job worth my mental and physical health?” Now, even as employees who were laid off are offered back their previous positions, the answer among many has been a resounding, “No.”

Paired with accrued savings, workers are now able to be more discerning with the jobs they accept. As such, a significant number have chosen to quit their current jobs while they search for more fulfilling options.

According to several surveys, employees are looking for the following advantages when job hunting:

Scheduling flexibility and/or telework options
Access to better employee benefits
Greater compensation
Job fulfillment

4. Continued Caregiving Duties

Finally, the COVID-19 pandemic has also affected the labor market through child care issues. While many schools have returned to in-person learning, some have not. On top of that, some day care facility rates have shot up due to staffing shortages and an influx of parents seeking child care.

For some parents, the costs of day care or the risks of in-person learning are too great. It may be more cost-effective to remain an at-home caregiver a bit longer instead of returning to the workforce right now.

Employer Takeaways

The current labor shortage is due to several overlapping factors, many stemming from the COVID-19 pandemic. However, it’s not a traditional labor shortage in that there are still many unemployed individuals. The real crux seems to be that workers are leveraging the moment to obtain better jobs.

It’s unclear how long workers will remain selective with their labor. Realistically, savings only last so long and, with ample vaccine availability, the pandemic may be under control soon. Workers may be compelled back into the workforce sooner rather than later. It’s in an employers’ best interest to listen to the desires of unemployed workers, namely with flexibility and benefits. Understanding these drivers will be critical to attraction and retention efforts.

At the end of they day, if an employer turns a deaf ear on what employees are looking for, they may be limiting the applicants they receive—both in terms of quality and quantity. This can severely impact an organization’s ability to grow and succeed.

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Need help attracting and retaining your workforce? Reach out to CorpStrat for more attraction and retention guidance. Email us at marketing@corpstrat.com