Rethinking Employee Benefits for the Post-Pandemic World
As life returns to normal, let us not lose track of the lessons learned from the past year and the need to reassess benefit programs.
Few could have imagined the far-reaching impact COVID-19 would have on the physical and financial health of our world. In fact, our recent analysis found lost work time resulting from sick or absent workers during the pandemic has cost employers more than $50 billion to date, and workers have lost upwards of $21 billion in wages. This only reflects employees who have access to sick and disability benefits—most employees have no disability coverage or paid leave at all and have lost much more.
As vaccination rates increase across the country, and restrictions lessen and move towards a post-pandemic world, let us not lose track of the lessons learned from the past year and the need to reassess benefit programs and policies to better meet the needs of employees and their families.
Time to care is essential
Caregiving has been and will continue to be a significant part of many employees’ lives. Prior to the pandemic, one in five employees provided care to an aging adult with about a quarter spending more than 20 hours a week caregiving. Overnight, the pandemic turned much of the workforce into caregivers, making the challenges of balancing work and home life much more visible with the burden felt across all industries and job levels. IBI’s analysis on the productivity impacts of caregiving revealed caregivers were more likely to need leave but not take it. They were also more likely to take incidental absences, receive performance warnings, and turn down a promotion.
The Families First Coronavirus Response Act (FFCRA) was enacted to guarantee employees of small businesses emergency paid pandemic-related sick and family leave if they were infected with coronavirus, needed to care for ill family members, or deal with issues such as school/work closings. It was the first federal mandate on paid leave and removed at least part of the dilemma many employees faced—to take time to care for the health and well-being of themselves and their family or work because they couldn’t afford not to.
However, the temporary rules expired at the end of 2020. Recently, a nationwide paid sick leave policy was proposed but in lieu of one now, many employers and workers are potentially susceptible to not only the risk of illness and infections in the workplace, but also the massive caregiving burden and its productivity and performance impacts. Offering or expanding on current paid leave policies just makes sense—it is a powerful public health tool and gives employees the peace of mind to take care of what they need to without lost wages or fear of a bad performance review.
Flexibility is paramount
Employers and employees often have very different expectations of what “work” looks like, and the pandemic has forced a reinvention of what this will look like moving forward. Office closures, social distancing restrictions, and children virtually learning at home all led employers to make flexible and work at home arrangements available where they could. At the peak, as much as 70% of the workforce was remote.
Many businesses leaders who may not have been comfortable with work at home arrangements in the past have now seen their teams accomplish just as much—or even more—when they are not in the office or working the typical 9-to-5 schedule. The stigma associated with working from home has now disappeared, and employees are expecting to not revert to pre-pandemic norms. Add to this the shortage of qualified applicants for open positions, employers will need to think more strategically about all benefits to attract and retain workers.
The social determinants of work may also play a big part in their strategy. Aligning benefit offerings with an employee’s financial status, ethnicity, family makeup and other obstacles which would preclude them from fully participating and being productive in their position will be key.
At the end of the day, a company’s greatest asset is its workforce. It is important to rethink and adjust leave and benefit strategies to protect the physical health and mental well-being of their people. The ones that do will have the greatest success and will not only thrive post-pandemic but be better prepared for future challenges to come.