5 Employee Benefits Every Biotech Company Should Offer to Stay Competitive

Posted by LearnLux

It’s no secret -- Biotechnology is a crazy competitive field.

As a result, hiring and retaining the best talent in this booming sector is a major challenge.

According to Boston Business Journal, 83 percent of top biotech companies plan to boost headcount in the next year. This growth will add 12,000 jobs to the industry by mid-2023 in Massachusetts alone.

Poised for incredible growth, biotech companies like yours are already budgeting for higher compensation demands and greater values of employee equity, but this alone won’t be enough to set them apart when it comes to talent acquisition efforts.

That’s where voluntary benefits come in.

To win the talent race, cutting edge biotech companies are starting to offer increasingly generous — and often unheard of — benefits to attract the best workers and keep them loyal, too.

Here are the top 5 benefits every biotech company should offer ASAP to stay competitive.

 

1. Financial Wellness

If one benefit alone could lead to healthier employees, lower turnover rates, reduce absenteeism all while raising employee satisfaction and elevating your brand as an employer, it would be a no brainer, right?

Implementing financial wellness as an employee benefit has these proven results -- especially in an industry like biotechnology where many workers are incredibly educated but struggle when it comes to their personal finances and debt management. Top employers are partnering with digital financial wellness providers like LearnLux that are fun & engaging for employees, and fast to set up so hiring managers can quickly start promoting this benefit as part of their packages. 

 

2. Maternity / Paternity Leave

Parental leave is an incredibly powerful benefit when it comes to attracting and retaining new parents in the workforce. Beyond doing the right thing, offering a competitive maternity / paternity leave benefit at your company can finally reduce the cost of turnover from employees who feel unable to continue work immediately after a life-changing event like starting a family. With a long-team talent acquisition and retention strategy in mind, parental leave is a must-have.

 

3. Open Time Off

Should your company offer an open PTO benefit? The human resources experts at SHRM say yes. A few years ago, open time off was a recruitment differentiator, but now employers in high-tech sectors like biotech must offer stellar vacation and PTO policies to stay competitive.

 

4. Catered Lunch

When reviewing Glassdoor.com’s employee reviews at top biotech companies, one benefit seemed to float up again and again as a “favorite perk” -- catered lunch. This employee perk fosters community among teams that might not work directly together, based around the simple action of “breaking bread” together.

Employers have also found that catering in lunch helps boost productivity and employee morale, especially during times like the winter months in New England when venturing out for food can be a painful chore.

 

5. Commuting Allowance

Getting to and from work can be one of the biggest challenges your employees face during their workdays, and that’s saying a lot when you work in biotech.

Offering a commuting allowance benefit shows that you understand and appreciate the effort they take to come into the office every day and do their best work. A commuting allowance can be offered as either a subsidy, pretax payroll deduction or a combination of both.

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Beyond just short-term competitive advantage, adding these benefits will help take biotech companies like yours into the future.

Many of the next major wins in biotech will demand companies develop brand new technologies and operating models. Having the right talent on your team (and keeping them long-term) will be the way that top biotech players will rise above the rest.

 

LearnLux for Biotech

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