This is how you develop a strong HR strategy for wellness and benefits

The development of a strong HR wellness and benefit strategy can be critical to attracting, retaining and motivating qualified and engaged employees. Our guide to how you can develop a strong HR strategy includes seven steps that will help you not only plan your strategy, but also evaluate and develop it.

Begin by determining a budget for wellness and benefits, then use the budget to help you prioritize and allocate available resources effectively.

What kind of employees do you have? Is it mostly older people with many years of experience and competence, or are they young people who are new to the working life and who are thirsty for knowledge and development – or do you have many parents of young children who want help in putting together the puzzle of life or is it perhaps a mix of all of it? By evaluating your workforce, you can gain an understanding of the company culture, which you can then combine with the company’s overall goals and values ​​to develop your wellness and benefit strategy. This is the first step in your strategy, so it’s good to be thorough here.

After you have evaluated what your workforce looks like, it is time to review which benefits are desired and what you think is most important to offer. Remember that benefits are an important part of retaining and recruiting talent – ​​and not all benefits are for everyone, so consider having a wide variety. A wide range is always good because it covers many different areas, but one suggestion is to send out a questionnaire that the employees can answer. In this way, you get a basis for designing the benefits package.

Informing employees about the benefits available to them is only the first step. It is important to also show how they can use the benefits – and how they can benefit from them. Make use of clear and regular communication, and you can ensure that all important information about the benefits gets out to all employees. At the same time, this gives employees a push in the right direction to take advantage of the benefits that are available. After all, benefits are there to be used!

Stress management, relaxing moments with massages and exercise programs are just a few benefits that help your employees lead a healthier lifestyle. An investment in the health of your employees via benefits is also an important investment for the company’s success. Feel free to think once more about what might be especially important for your employees in terms of well-being. By offering a wide and attractive range of wellness and benefits, you can both prevent and reduce sickness absence and the number of sick leave.

Regularly evaluate how effective your benefits are and adapt your strategy based on both results and feedback from your employees. Be humble about what worked and what didn’t – and change and correct where necessary. An HR strategy always needs to be developed and refined.

When it comes to wellness and benefits, laws and regulations change between rounds, and both tax benefits and various work environment regulations can therefore affect your range of benefits. For example, the Swedish Tax Agency now approves the use of various apps as a form of wellness. Feel free to keep up with what counts as both wellness and benefits and what it is that is especially popular right now. In this way, you get an extra tool to recruit and retain talent.

In many industries, competition for valuable talent is high, so it’s good to keep track of what competitors are offering in terms of benefits and wellness so you can get a feel for what you should offer. Above all, you get an idea of ​​what they don’t offer, which you can offer to keep the business attractive to talent. Keeping an eye on your competitors’ wellness and benefit packages can give you an ace up your sleeve when it comes to new hires.