Dr. David Lenihan, Ph.D., J.D., FRSM is the CEO/Cofounder of Tiber Health and the President of Ponce Health Sciences University.
In a recent edition of the Wall Street Journal‘s “Workplace Report,” contributor Joann S. Lublin wrote a piece titled “Employers Should Offer Innovative Benefits at Different Career Stages.”
Lublin explained, “Introducing certain targeted benefits makes more sense—especially if you want to recruit and retain people at different stages of their careers.” Examples include student-debt assistance and miscarriage leave, as well as menopause care and nonfinancial retirement coaching.
I believe this is a fantastic idea that organizations should explore in an effort to differentiate themselves from their competitors for in-demand talent. My concern, however, is that even if the financial value of these benefits for workers in different career stages is the same and neither bracket is benefiting more than the other, there could still be some quibbling. From my view, this discord is especially possible among workers who might not have ever received the benefits other workers are being granted, such as assisting younger workers with their student loan debts, for example. So, they might not believe such support is equitable.
WSJ reporter Callum Borchers discussed this issue in an article titled “Nobody at Work Wants to Hear About Your Student-Loan Payments.” Borchers set the table with the assertion that “college debt is a new third rail in the workplace.” He also pointed out that “debt-free co-workers say they made sacrifices and smart choices, and they have little patience for sob stories” from colleagues who fret about their loan repayment stresses.
To avoid, or at least dampen, the potential frustrations of team members, here are some of my recommendations on how to smoothly roll out benefits for different career stages.
1. Offer an equal number of creative benefits relevant to the needs and goals of your younger and older workforce members.
2. Make sure the costs for each of these benefits are affordable and sustainable for your organization.
3. Ensure the economic value of the benefits offered to differing age tiers of workers is equal and that no tier benefits more than another. To achieve this, consider assigning and then communicating a dollar value to each of the benefits. This will allow team members to understand that, regardless of which benefits they pick, no one is gaining a fiscal advantage over anyone else based on their choice.
4. Let your team members know they can select a maximum of “X” benefits that are most appealing to them from the buffet you’ve created.
5. Inform your team members that the economic value of each of the benefit bundles is equitable, and everyone will enjoy the upside of what’s being offered, regardless of the benefits they select. The dollar value assignment that would accompany each benefit on the buffet of age-targeted options would allow you to credibly and transparently achieve this.
Will there be outliers who carp about the injustice of the benefits offered to other groups? Perhaps. But if the economics of your age-targeted benefits are on the same plane across the company, those team members will need to squash their grumblings and instead focus on the execution of their at-work to-do’s.
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