The most powerful employee recruitment and retention tools a business has are the pay and the benefits package it offers.While a killer company culture and creative amenities look great in a magazine spread, they aren’t enough to convince top talent that their future lies with your business.The right benefits package, though, could persuade a prospective employee to choose a position at your company over another that offers a similar salary. According to a study conducted by Harvard Business Review, these five benefits are considerably more desirable than others. No. 1:Health,Dental, andVision Insurance. As the cost of health care has skyrocketed in recent decades, so too has the demand for employers to provide comprehensive coverage. Unsurprisingly, it’s the most expensive benefit to provide. Weighing how much coverage your company is willing to offer may be a delicate balancing act, but the rewards can completely change your business for the better. Companies like Patagonia, with its best-in-class maternity policy, retain employees at a significantly higher rate than average. No. 2: FlexibleHours. Our lives are busier than ever before, and scheduling conflicts crop up all the time. Employees don’t like having to decide between working and attending their child’s soccer games. Offering some flexibility in terms of when somebody can work, therefore, is extremely desirable. No. 3:More VacationTime. In the European Union, companies are required to offer at least 20 days of paid vacation to employees. In the U.S., that number falls to a whopping 0. In fact, 1 in 4 American employees doesn’t get paid time off at all. The more you offer, the more appealing you’ll be. No. 4:Work-From-HomeOptions. Technology has made it so that many employees don’t need to be in the office all the time. Because of this, many employees actively seek out jobs that provide flexible work options. Even offering one or two work- from-home days per week can be a huge draw for candidates. No. 5: UnlimitedVacation. This policy might sound crazy on first read, but admired companies like Hubspot, Dropbox, and Netflix all offer unlimited vacation. Each company structures their policy a little differently, but they all stress the importance of work-life balance to support happy, productive, and fulfilled employees. If you’ve found yourself wondering why you can’t attract the candidates you want, take a look at your benefits policy.When you can’t compete on that front, you’ll find it mighty difficult to get and keep the best people. A Powerful Recruitment and Retention Tool THE TOP 5 EMPLOYEE BENEFITS
As Halloween looms and you load up your grocery cart with candy, you may ask yourself, “Why do I provide these spooky gremlins with a sugar high every Oct. 31, anyway?”Well, when your doorbell starts ringing around 6 p.m. this All Hallows’ Eve, you can thank the Celts for this tradition of candy and costumes. Halloween itself is a kind of mishmash of four different cultural festivals of old: two Roman fêtes, which commemorated the dead and the goddess of fruit and trees (not at the same time); the Celtic Samuin or Samhain, a new year’s party thrown at the end of our summer; and the Catholic All Saint’s Day, designed to replace Samuin and divorce it from its pagan origins. Long before there were young’uns on your porch dressed as Thanos with candy-filled pillowcases in hand, the Celts believed that Samuin marked an overlapping of the realms of the living and the dead. To trick the spirits leaking into our world, young men donned flowing white costumes and black masks — a great disguise when ghosts were about. The Catholic Church was never a big fan of these pagan traditions, so they renamed it “All Saints’ Day” and gussied it up in religious garb. By the 11th century, people were dressing up as saints, angels, and the occasional demon instead of spirits. Eventually, costumed children started tearing through town begging for food and money and singing a song or prayer in return — a practice called “souling.” But when did they start dressing WHY THERE ARE KIDS ON YOUR PORCH ASKING FOR CANDY The History of Trick-or-Treating
up as Minions? Starting in the 19th century, souling turned to “guising,” which gave way to trick-or-treating in mid- 20th-century America, and the costumes diversified. So put on some clown
makeup and a big smile, scoop up a handful of sweets, and scare the living daylights out of ‘em — ‘tis the season!
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