The importance of employee benefits

Support your overseas staff with international employee benefits

As the war for talent becomes ever more intense, businesses must think harder about the benefits they offer to employees. The right benefits package could help you to attract, retain and incentivise your best employees, giving you a competitive edge in the market and helping you to grow your business internationally.

This is especially true if you employ staff across multiple countries. An international employee benefits package can not only help you to attract and retain employees overseas, but to align your employees around your company values no matter where they are in the world.

What are international employee benefits?

Employee benefits are anything offered to staff above and beyond their salary. They may be perks or products like health insurance, life insurance and income protection. Benefits are key to engaging employees, helping staff stay healthy, reducing absenteeism and increasing job satisfaction.

Why is it important to offer employee benefits?

Employees around the world are increasingly looking for employers that offer a strong package of incentives and perks. Various studies have found that employees are more likely to choose, and stay in jobs that offer competitive benefits packages. Some of the latest findings include:

• 70% of employees are more likely to stay in a job that offers a benefit package
• 65% of employees say that perks are important to them when considering new job offers
• 57% of employees chose employer-provided health insurance as their top benefit

A strong employee benefits offering can therefore help your company in a number of ways:

Attracting top talent

Your organisation’s success depends on its ability to recruit top talent. Highly-qualified and experienced employees often need to be plucked from other jobs. By offering a competitive benefits package, you have the opportunity to lure these employees away from their existing roles. HR Review reports that 6 in 10 employees would be motivated to change jobs if their new employer offered stronger benefits.

Retaining talent

Getting employees through the door is only half the challenge. You must also work hard to keep them at your company once they’ve accepted your offer. Losing employees can be costly – it costs on average six to nine months’ of an employee’s salary to replace them, rising to 213% of a salary to replace an executive. Providing robust benefits is therefore important when it comes to retaining your top talent and minimising employee turnover. WTW found that 44% of employees were motivated to stay with their current employers based on the strength of their benefits package, while 39% would leave if another company elsewhere offered a stronger package.

Increasing productivity

A strong benefits package can also provide a strong incentive for your employees, encouraging them to perform at their highest levels. By introducing a robust benefits package, you may start to notice productivity and profitability increasing throughout your organisation. Health benefits can also help reduce the number of sick days employees take, thus further increasing their productivity further in this way too. The Association of British Insurers found that health benefits help to add £6.1 billion per year to the British economy by reducing the number of sick days employees take.

Helping you to build your business

As your company grows, it’s important to think about your reputation as an employer. By providing a strong benefits package, you can boost your brand’s reputation, while also ensuring a happy and motivated workforce. This reflects well not only on your employees, but your customers too. 88% of employees say that workplace benefits have had a positive effect on their well-being at work.

Reducing absence

When employees have robust health and well-being benefits to support their lives and lifestyles, they are less likely to require time off work. This can reduce the burden on your business to pay for sick leave. This is especially true when your healthcare perks help staff access higher quality healthcare services, which can shorten the time they need to recover from illness or injury. The Association of British Insurers found that 75% of all health insurance claims in 2022 came through employer-provided healthcare schemes.

Saving you money

Providing employee benefits may seem like a cost centre for your business. However, these benefits packages can produce fantastic value for the company through reduced costs. Group income protection insurance, for instance, can reduce the burden you might experience when employees require extended time off for injury and illness, while group health insurance can help to provide health and well-being initiatives that reduce the likelihood of employees needing paid time off.

How can benefits support employees living and working abroad?

As an employer with staff based all around the world, you know the importance of attracting, retaining and incentivising your top talent. As an international employer, you will no doubt find added importance in offering a strong employee benefits package.

With robust benefits to support your employees living and working abroad, you will see added benefits such as:

Attracting and retaining employees around the world

Sometimes, the best employee for the job is one who comes from overseas. Getting these people to join your company, and keeping hold of them long-term, may depend on your ability to offer strong incentives. Employer-provided assurances, such as health insurance and income protection insurance, can offer employees living and working abroad peace of mind, convincing them that you are the right employer for them.

Helping employees settle in overseas

As your company grows, you may need to position talent overseas. Becoming an expatriate is no small undertaking, as your employees will have a number of new anxieties. By providing a strong employee benefits package, you can help them to not only adapt to their new lives abroad, but to make the most of them. Perks such as international health insurance also offer peace of mind, helping them to feel confident about the transition.

Building a consistent global culture

As an international employer, you’ll find that different territories come with different rules and regulations. For instance, you may be obliged to provide your employees with health insurance in certain countries. But providing incentives to one group of employees and not the others can undermine your global company culture, causing employees to feel disconnected. By providing a single, consistent benefits package around the world, you can unite your global workforce around a common mission and ensure that everybody feels part of your company’s culture.

Easy to apply

We make it easy to apply and we’ll get you covered fast. When you sign up to a William Russell policy, we sign up to a partnership with you. Our experienced group protection team is by your side from application through to policy account management. We handle everything once the policy is in place, so you can focus on your day-to-day business.

Notes on our group insurance

We show the benefits on this webpage in US dollars, but we can also denominate your policy in pounds sterling or Euros. You won’t find complete information for our plans on this webpage, nor the full T&Cs, limitations, and exclusions that would apply if you purchase group health, life, or income protection insurance. You can find complete information in the plan agreement, which we suggest you read together with this webpage. We work hard to ensure the information we provide on this webpage is accurate and up-to-date, but inaccuracies are possible. We rectify errors as soon as we become aware of them. The T&Cs that apply to your policy are those found in your plan agreement.