Are Your Organization's Benefits as Inclusive as They Could Be?

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Let’s start here: just about every company offers benefits of some kind. Maybe you run a restaurant and offer an employee discount. Maybe you run a small marketing firm and offer health insurance. Maybe you’re part of a large engineering firm and you offer a hybrid work environment and childcare reimbursements. While pay is absolutely the most critical part of employee compensation, benefits are important and they definitely play a role in how employee think about your organization as they consider whether it’s a place they might want to work.

The full list of benefits that a company could offer is huge, and it can be daunting and overwhelming to figure out what potential benefits could look like for your organization. And it’s equally challenging to then figure out what your organization is actually going to offer.

As you consider benefits, it’s critical to think about how to make them as inclusive as possible; by inclusive, we mean that they are designed to meet a wide variety of employee needs and circumstances.

Here are some large categories of benefits and some questions you can ask about your organization’s benefits to ensure they are as inclusive as possible:

• Healthcare

  • Healthcare is heavily tied to employment in the United States; does our organization offer health insurance to its employees

  • Mental Health and Substance Abuse Disorders

    • Does your organization’s healthcare options cover therapy and counseling services?

    • Does your organization’s healthcare options cover inpatient and outpatient substance abuse treatments?

  • Physical Fitness and Wellness

    • Does your organization offer access to mindfulness and meditation apps or stress management courses?

    • Does your organization offer access to a gym or fitness center or reimbursements for employees to purchase at-home fitness equipment?

  • LGBTQIA+ Individuals

    • Does your organization’s healthcare options cover gender affirming care for transgender individuals?

  • Parent-To-Be and New Parents

    • Does your organization pay for family planning services, such as adoption or IVF treatments?

    • Does your organization’s healthcare options cover access to reproductive care, including abortion services?

  • Note: Some medical procedures (ex. gender affirming care and abortion services) might not be available in every state where your organization operates; if a medical procedure is not available in states where your employees are located, does our organization pay for travel?

• Work Location and Hours

  • How flexible is your organization in terms of work hours?

    • Does every person need to work at the same time? Are there certain critical times or meetings where everyone should convene? Outside of those, can team members set their own hours?

  • How flexible is your organization in terms of work location?

    • Is it necessary for each person to be in the office for all of their work hours? Are there some times where having everyone together is valuable or necessary? Outside of those, can team members work from where they’d like?

• Paid Time Off (PTO)

  • Does your organization offer floating holidays so employees do not have to use vacation days for their sincerely held religious beliefs?

  • Does your organization offer parental leave? Is parental leave the same for all employees regardless of whether they are going to be a mother or a father? Is that parental leave the same regardless of whether the parents are having a baby by birth, adoption, or placement?

  • Does your organization offer bereavement leave? Is it restricted to immediate family? Can it be expanded to extended family, close friends, and pets?

  • Does your organization offer volunteer or community engagement hours so employees can support local organizations or a cause they are passionate about?

• Miscellaneous

  • Does your organization reimburse employees for the costs associated with childcare? Could your organization consider partnering with a local childcare provider to install a childcare facility in your building?

  • Does your organization reimburse employees for the costs associated with eldercare?

The best organizations both pay their workers well and implement benefits that support employees across a wide variety of personal circumstances. While it can be hard to determine your benefits strategy, using inclusion as your north star is a great way to ensure that all of your organization’s benefits are as impactful as possible.

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