Employee Benefits For Small Businesses In 2024

In 2023, small businesses will want to have mental health benefits, virtual health care benefits, flexible work arrangements, and inclusive leave policies. These benefits trends are happening across industries, so to keep your benefits competitive, your business needs to be aware of them.

The modern era is changing what perks employees want and even expect from their employers. Are you in the thick of reworking your benefits plan to meet the changing needs of your company? If so, Pacific Prime has created our very own draft of benefits trends to make it easy for you.

With over 20 years of global experience creating employee benefits packages from Los Angeles to New York to Hong Kong, we know what we’re talking about. We’ve worked as the benefits specialist and insurance provider for over 5,000 companies and 500 school campuses.

Let us make this easy for you.

In this article, you’ll learn in-depth about the 9 hottest benefits trends, plus some great tips for designing your own plan, and you won’t want to miss our Frequently Asked Questions section at the end.

2023 Employee Benefit Trends For Small Businesses

Small businesses reworking their employee benefits packages will want to know these 2023 trends. Many modern trends lean toward offering mental health benefits, health and wellness benefits, education assistance, family-building benefits, childcare benefits, and more.

Being aware of the current trends can help you remain competitive with the companies you compete against when hiring new recruits. Having an attractive, updated employee benefits plan is essential in this modern world, and this article will guide you with that!

We are going to delve deep into the following 2023 employee benefits trends:

1. Mental Health Benefits
2. Health and Wellness Benefits
3. Education Assistance
4. Family-Building Benefits
5. Lowering Health Care Premiums
6. Child Care Benefits
7. Virtual Health Care Benefits
8. Flexible Work Arrangements
9. Inclusive Leave Policies

You may be surprised to learn that many current trends include non-monetary benefits.

Mental Health Benefits

There is great interest in mental health recently, so it is very attractive to employees if you offer mental health benefits. This could be a form of full or partial coverage for mental health treatment or changing the environment of your workplace to support creativity, problem-solving, and health.

There are a variety of ways you can provide mental health benefits:

• Coverage for therapy sessions
• Hiring virtual mental health providers for the company
• Mental Health Initiatives
• Mental Health Education
• Employee Assistance Programs (EAPs)
• Suicide Awareness Training for managers

Health And Wellness Benefits

Offering health and wellness benefits can increase productivity, prevent exhaustion and burnout, improve the overall quality of life for your employees, and nurture a positive and unified work environment. By decreasing depression, anxiety, and stress in your workers, your company will thrive.

There are many ways to offer health and wellness benefits, and these are just a few:

• Healthy Eating Initiatives
• Exercising Initiatives
• Financial Health Education
• Gym Memberships or Exercise Classes
• Behavioral Health Training
• Nutrition Education
• Employee Discounts
• Wellness Programs

Education Assistance

Offering education assistance to your employees means you offer full or partial coverage for them to return to school and get a degree. Another option is for you to agree to assist in paying off your employee’s student loans. Lifting this financial burden can be a strong appeal and retention tool.

If you offer to pay for your employee’s higher education, you can supply full or partial costs for:

• Tuition
• Fees
• Books
• Supplies
• Equipment

Family-Building Benefits

Another 2023 trend for employers is offering family-building benefits that include much more than maternity insurance. Current employees like employee benefits that support all stages of pregnancy and postpartum care, family planning services, and even fertility treatments.

To stay ahead of your competition, you’ll want to consider offering support for all family-creating needs.

Consider including resources for and coverage related to:

• Pregnancy
• Lactation
• Preconception Family Planning
• Miscarriages (including time off for a pregnancy loss)
• Adoption
• Surrogacy
• IVF
• Fertility Treatments
• Prenatal Nutrition
• Return-to-Work Planning

Lowering Health Care Premiums

A trend in 2023 is for employers to absorb the heavy cost of healthcare premiums on behalf of their employees, either significantly reducing what their employees have to pay or covering them entirely. With the rising costs of healthcare, this is particularly appealing to employees.

Ways to make healthcare more affordable for your employees:

• Absorb most or all of the premiums yourself
• Provide employee health benefit accounts

Make sure you understand the importance of health benefits for employees as you craft this portion of your benefits plan.

Child Care Benefits

Small businesses will want to consider offering childcare benefits to their employees. If both parents work, it can alleviate stress and financial concerns if employers provide on or off-site child care services, subsidized daycare, tutoring services, or more.

Here are a few ideas for child care benefits for small businesses:

• On-site Child Care Services
• Backup Child Care Services
• Tutoring Services
• College Coaching
• Subsidized Child Care
• Similarly, is employer-provided Eldercare for dependent elders

Virtual Health Care Benefits

Many employees are interested in virtual healthcare benefits because it provides more convenient visits. It can be cheaper, more accessible for those with disabilities, and prevent employees from delaying or opting out of being seen. Telemedicine is on the rise in employee benefits.

We suggest small businesses cover virtual options for:

• Primary Care
• Mental Health Care
• Behavioral Healthcare
• Specialty Care

Flexible Work Arrangements

Particularly among the rising generation of young workers, offering flexible work arrangements is a must in your employee benefits packages. Gen Z and Millenials prefer being able to work remotely full time or in a hybrid of in-office and at-home model. They also like choosing their own work hours.

If this is possible in your workspace, providing flexible work options will highly improve your job appeal for new recruits and help retain the employees you already have.

Here are some ways you can offer flexibility in your work schedule:

• Hybrid/remote work with some days in the office and some days at home, or all from home
• Grant employees autonomy to choose when they start and stop work, how many hours a day they work, and how many days they work
• Be considerate of your employees that work in different time zones
• Increase paid time off to decrease burnout and increase productivity
• Allow for casual dress codes
• Offer unlimited time off

If these suggestions make you feel anxious about your employees getting their work done, you can try to tell yourself that different people work at different paces and are more productive at different times of the day.

Granting your employees the ability to govern their own work schedule can help them accomplish their work in less time in many cases, and as long as they complete all of their tasks with flying colors, both you and they can feel pleased with your working agreement.

Inclusive Leave Policies

In the modern era, it’s becoming popular to add inclusive leave policies to your employee benefits by expanding the definition of family leave. This can look like adding additional paid caregiver options, such as for adoptive and foster parents, and redefining what a family is.

To expand the scope of your leave policies, provide paid leave for:

• Both Parents
• Adoptive Parents
• Foster Parents
• Same-Sex Couples
• Fathers
• Mothers
• Grandparent Caregivers
• Elderly Caregivers
• Caregivers for the Sick

Tips For Designing Small Business Employee Benefits Plans

When designing your small business employee benefits plan, you want to remember that part of your strength is that you are few in number. This grants you the freedom to cater everything you do to the unique individuals that work for you. Our first tip is to tailor all benefits to your employees.

To see all our tips for designing a small business benefits plan, read the following list:

1. Tailor your benefits to the needs and interests of your employees
2. Be aware of benefit trends in your industry and for your company size
3. Choose the right employee benefits broker for your company’s needs
4. Learn about employee benefits consulting and how a broker can help
5. Decide early on how much money you can put into your benefits plan
6. Take time to consider the type of atmosphere you want in your workplace so you can use your employee benefits as a means to create that
7. Offer a variety of retirement plan options to your employees so they can opt into the plan that suits their needs best

If you’d like additional tips, check out these steps on how to design employee benefit plans in 2023.

Frequently Asked Questions

What are the best employee benefits being offered in 2023?

The best employee benefits that employers are offering in 2023 are hybrid and remote working accommodations, virtual healthcare treatment coverage, leave policies inclusive of caregivers and same-sex couples, and lower healthcare premiums for their employees.

What are the modern employee benefits in 2023?

Companies in 2023 are adjusting to the modern employee benefit trends their employee’s value, such as family-building coverage for family planning services and fertility treatments, education assistance to earn a new degree, child care services or deals, and in-company mental health initiatives.

Can a small business offer employee benefits?

A small business absolutely can and should offer employee benefits. In fact, several benefits are required by law, such as health insurance, workers’ compensation, and disability insurance. Small business owners should be familiar with the current competitive benefits they can add to their plans.

Why should a small business have employee benefits?

Small business owners should provide employee benefits to their company because they make their business more attractive to new hires and they improve worker retention. Benefits also make employees happy which improves their attitude about life and work, ultimately improving their quality of work.

Conclusion

You now have a much better idea of what benefits trends your small business should adapt to. By staying up with the times, not only will you make your employees happy, but you’ll find that your company will thrive. Excellent work for showing up and reading this article today!

You may also be interested in reading about 25 types of employee benefits for 2023.

If you’d like advice on your benefits plan from a non-biased, professional expert, contact Pacific Prime today!

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Serena Fung

Senior Content Creator at Pacific Prime

Serena Fung is a Senior Content Creator at Pacific Prime, a global insurance brokerage and employee specialist serving over 1.5 million clients in 15 offices across the world. With 2+ years of experience writing about the subject, she aims to demystify the world of insurance for readers with the latest updates, guides and articles on the blog.

Serena earned her Bachelor’s Degree in Psychology from the University of British Columbia, Canada. As such, she is an avid advocate of mental health and is fascinated by all things psychology (especially if it’s cognitive psychology!).

Her previous work experience includes teaching toddlers to read, writing for a travel/wellness online magazine, and then a business news blog. These combined experiences give her the skills and insights she needs to explain complex ideas in a succinct way. Being the daughter of an immigrant and a traveler herself, she is passionate about educating expats and digital nomads on travel and international health insurance.

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