Understanding your employees’ benefits preferences is critical to providing the best bang-for-your-buck benefits to your employees possible.

Benefits are often described according to their monetary value to the employee, but the problem with describing benefits in this way is that many benefits are worth more to some employees than others. Especially for smaller businesses, offering benefits that are higher value to your specific employees will help earn the most rapport from your employees.

The best way to understand what your employees want the most is simply to survey them, which is why we created this free employee benefits survey template for you to use.

Why Conduct an Employee Benefits Survey?

An employee benefits survey does exactly what it says. It surveys your employees to gather data on what benefits are most important to them. This is helpful for a number of reasons.

First, asking your employees what benefits they are looking for establishes trust at a foundational level. When you’re willing to survey your employees, however, you also need to be willing to make changes based on what you find. Remember, this entire process is about understanding how to give your employees the most benefit from your dollar possible.

Second, surveying employees is a data-driven approach that improves the efficiency of your company. Outside of gaining employee trust, employee surveys are critical in optimizing your business in general. By surveying employees regularly, you gain a lot of data over time into what exactly your employees think and feel. This is true for much more than conducting employee benefit surveys.

Third, surveying employees is an effective way to gain an edge over your competitors. Both understanding and taking steps to meet your employees needs and continually optimizing your business through data-driven processes will help give your business an edge. When it comes to employee benefits, this is true because tailored benefits packages are always better than generic benefits. Tailored benefits provide your employees with more value, giving you the option to retain your quality talent while attracting new quality talent.

Key Areas to Cover in an Employee Benefits Survey

The key areas you need to cover in an employee benefits survey are healthcare, work-life balance, financial wellness, career development, and additional benefits.

Healthcare benefits are often the cornerstone of employee benefit packages. With self-funded healthcare plans becoming an incredibly viable option for smaller businesses, healthcare is more flexible than ever. The main points to consider here are knowing and understanding what kind of healthcare benefits your employees are needing and then deciding if there’s any way you can tailor your healthcare packages for what your employees need.

Work-life balance is another area that is incredibly important but also fully dependent on your employees. Everyone approaches work-life balance differently, and you may even need to address these benefits on an employee-to-employee basis. What is generally true, however, is everyone likes paid-time-off (PTO), assuming they are able to use it when they would like to. Addressing your PTO accessibility before looking into other flexible work options like remote work or flexible schedules are other great ways to provide a little more work-life balance.

Financial wellness includes retirement plans, bonuses, and financial planning resources. While many employees prefer a simple retirement plan with an employer match, bonuses are a great way to incentivize productive employees. Many employees would love more competitive bonus structures to benefit their hard work.

Career development might include training opportunities, attending conferences, or improving other skills. Hiring is expensive, but one of the best ways to get certain skills on your team is to look into who is interested in acquiring those skills and then supporting them in doing so. This directly improves your business, building on your existing team for little resource cost.

The final area, additional benefits, is where your employee benefits survey can shine. You want to find out what those additional benefits are that your employees specifically would like to see in their benefits package. Things like child care, gym memberships, or counseling programs are all things your employees might need to pay for anyway, and providing them with an avenue to receive those benefits can go a long way with your team.

How to Use the Survey Template Effectively

The first thing you need to do is determine how often you should survey your employees. You could survey them annually or biannually, but many employers like to give themselves enough time before the healthcare cycle to adjust plans if needed.

You also need to choose whether or not you want to survey anonymously or not. While an anonymous survey is often preferred in a workplace setting, smaller teams might actually benefit from discussing with one another and understanding each others’ needs through the surveying process.

Building in time to your employees’ work schedules is the best way to get solid data from your benefits survey. The easiest way to do this is simply to put it on the calendar and schedule it during everyones’ work day. You want the best response rate possible, so while you don’t necessarily want to make it mandatory, you should be transparent about what the survey is for and remove as much friction with taking your survey as possible.

Benefits of Using Our Employee Benefits Survey Template

Our employee benefits survey includes professionally crafted questions that are designed to uncover important insights from your employees. We actively serve hundreds of businesses, and our team has a robust understanding of employer-employee relationships. We’re confident that our employee benefits survey can help you gather the best benefits data this year.

The other thing to keep in mind is our benefits template is merely a template. While you can absolutely use it on its own and get fantastic data, customizing our template will help you gather even more specific data. You know your employees better than anybody, which is why changing or adding to the survey can really help uncover the information you need.

Our survey template is designed to save you time. With a quick download, you can easily source multiple questions to either build a starting point or act as a finished survey, ready to transform your benefits packages.

Download Our Employee Benefits Survey Template

Our employee benefits survey template is free and easy to use. Download our questions, customize them to your liking, and then it’s as simple as booking the time on your employees’ calendars to take the survey. From there, keep an open mind and look for ways to make data-driven choices for how to improve your benefits packages.

Download our employee benefits survey template today.