Retaining and Rewarding your Employees.

By Rachel Efetha, Charter Financial Planner with Anstee & Co.

Some companies are only concerned with paying minimum wage and setting up a NEST workplace pension scheme to tick a box.  Whilst this works for some industries that require very little training and a high turnover of staff, like hospitality, it does not work for other sectors.

So, how can you attract and retain a high calibre employee if you are only providing the basics for them?  What else can you do other than pay towards the higher end of market value for that job?

This is where employee benefits come into play.  It may well set you above competitors offering similar salaries and does not have to cost the earth.

Death in Service

Death in service benefit is a group life assurance scheme where you, as the employer, set up a fixed amount of cover for each employee if they should die whilst employed by you.  Typically, the amount insured is 4 x salary.  Most schemes do not individually underwrite each member, so it is of great advantage to someone who might not otherwise be accepted at normal terms if they applied themselves.

Group Critical Illness Cover

This is a bit more expensive as you are more likely to suffer a critical illness before retirement than die but will pay out a fixed sum on diagnosis of a pre-specified illness.  Commonly much lower sums assured are offered by the employer for this, such as 1 x salary.

Group Income Protection

Unlike Critical Illness, this pays out if you cannot do your job due to an illness or injury, until you get better and return to work, or reach retirement age.  It will pay out for things that are not critical. Such as broken limbs, mental health issues if it is stopping your employee from doing their job.  Having this in place could save you quite a bit of money if you have a discretionary sick pay arrangement and feel morally obliged to continue full pay for someone say, with a terminal illness.  To make it more cost-effective, you could put a plan in place with a limited payout period of two years, rather than through to retirement.

Private Medical Insurance

You can opt for full cover which will pay out for private treatment for any ailment but be aware that in the event of a costly claim, your premiums for the next year can rocket.  Alternatively, you can opt for an NHS Top-up plan which for a low cost will give employees cashback on opticians and dental work, and pay for things like physiotherapy, homoeopathy and a second opinion.  Anything that speeds up treatment and recovery for your employees has to be money well spent!

For all of these, you can choose to fully fund them yourselves, subsidise them, or use salary sacrifice for the employees to pay themselves, whilst benefiting from cheaper rates that group schemes offer.  You can also elect to include family members, either at your cost or through salary sacrifice.  You can also have different levels of cover for different groups of employees.  E.g., Death in service for everyone, but Private Medical Insurance for Senior Managers upwards.

How Anstee & Co can help you plan with Retaining and Rewarding your Employees.

We are Independent Financial Advisers (IFA’s). This means that the financial advice we provide is unbiased. We look at all the options available to you and your business from the “whole of market”. Our experience covers all aspects of employee benefits.

Our Head Office is located at:

• Kettering, Northamptonshire

Additionally, our Financial Advisers live and make use of meeting rooms in:

• Bedford
• Market Harborough
• Wellingborough
• Northampton

If you would like to find out how we can help your business with “Retaining and Rewarding your Employees”, why not contact us today? The initial, “getting to know you and your business” meeting, is at our expense and is without obligation. Meetings can be arranged at a time and location that is convenient to you. This includes coming to your business. So why not contact us today to see how we can help you.

Also, we can arrange meetings by making use of video conferencing facilities such as-

• Zoom
• Microsoft Teams
• Facetime

We can also arrange a telephone conference call. The choice is yours. There is no need to visit an office as all work can be handled remotely.

If you have any thoughts on this article, “Retaining and Rewarding your Employees”, then we would love to hear from you.

Finally, the information contained in this article is for information purposes only and does not constitute advice. Anstee & Co. is authorized and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA).