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Forbes
02-07-2025
- Health
- Forbes
The Ultimate Benefits Package? One That Comes With The Power Of Choice
Soni Basi, Ph.D., is a seasoned CHRO and has established her own consulting agency, POP HR. Let's talk about menopause in the workplace. Not the conversation you expected? In truth, conversations about how to deal with menopause in the workplace are as rare as workplace resources for those experiencing it. But think about the message the absence of such considerations sends to individuals going through menopause. They may worry no one at work will empathize with their experience. Instead, they might choose to hide their symptoms, which can include depression, anxiety, sleep deprivation and cognitive impairment, all of which contribute to burnout. In the process, they likely spend more time and energy at work worrying about how to handle it themselves. If we dig deeper, this conversation isn't really about menopause at all. It's about the critical link between choice, benefits and productivity. A modern company with a large workforce of women may naturally think to offer maternity care benefits, and for good reason. But among that population, there might be some who would be more motivated by fertility or menopausal care. And then again, some employee motivations may be unrelated to healthcare. When companies adapt their offerings to meet the diverse needs of their workforce, they announce to candidates, "I want employees to be able to show up as their whole selves without having to worry about external factors." Through highly personalized benefits, leaders also build higher-performing teams. There's more than one side to healthcare. I once worked at a company that offered mental health benefits, but had few conversations about it. Instead, workloads were heavy. Performance expectations were high. People were burning out, quitting and worse. Unsurprisingly, employee usage of mental health benefits was off the charts, more than any other offering. But it wasn't until leadership noticed that usage and made mental health an intentional part of the conversation that we were able to effectively address our workforce crisis. Benefits are expensive, but higher usage leads to healthier employees and, ultimately, a healthier bottom line for the company. According to McKinsey and the World Economic Forum, "enhanced employee health and well-being could generate up to $11.7 trillion in global economic value." This would require organizations to offer traditional healthcare options, but also nontraditional benefits, like flexible schedules and mental health services. In fact, the best healthcare options won't fit into a one-size-fits-all package. Most respondents in a 2023 CNBC/SurveyMonkey survey wanted fully paid healthcare premiums (51%), much more than those who wanted free food onsite (26%). Look closer, however, and Gen-Z workers felt dramatically different: free food (42%) was just as important as fully paid healthcare premiums (41%), with student loan repayments (34%) right behind them. While their preferences may differ, employees care about benefits. More and more, I see candidates eager to understand a company's benefits before being hired. In 2025, Gallup reported that the percentage of employees who would take another job for better pay and benefits rose from 41% pre-pandemic to 54%. Meanwhile, companies paying attention are already personalizing benefits. In Aon's 2024 U.S. Health Survey, 25% of employers reported plans to "increase flexibility and choice of benefits to better fit personal priorities," and 34% were exploring navigation apps using personal data to connect individuals to relevant options. Once technology companies integrate AI into those platforms, I think highly customized healthcare benefits will become table stakes. Personalized perks align passion and mission. Healthcare benefits are vital, but only a part of the picture. The top two drivers workers cited for accepting a new job in a 2022 Gallup survey were better pay (64%) and better work-life balance (61%). More interestingly, the third biggest factor for nearly six in ten respondents was "the ability to do what I do best." Tapping into that passion requires an understanding of what really excites someone about their work. Then leaders can design organizational perks that speak the language of that individual's particular motivators. It may sound obvious to say that satisfaction is the biggest driver of performance, but for the skeptical, recent research now backs this up (subscription required). Satisfaction comes from how motivated, valued and supported an employee feels day-to-day. Some get this through higher pay. But others crave praise, power, prestige or purpose. Let's say a company offers healthcare and two perks: a spot bonus program and a points program earning products through an online retailer. They may consider this "good enough," but these offerings only cover employees motivated by their pocketbooks. Adding perk options that also tap into other motivators—a new title, more responsibility, a seat alongside leadership or a chance to give back to the community—would be more effective at driving widespread productivity. Choice returns greater value. Companies that spend money on benefits want them to be highly utilized, which is more likely when packages reflect their workforce's needs. Choice is key. To change your current offering to an options approach, first, look externally. See what others are offering and where your competitors have an advantage. Then look internally at your own data around which benefits people are using (and not using), and see how that connects to your population, their ages and their experiences. Finally, ask your people. Finding out what matters to them is the easiest way to understand their individual motivators. Until I ask people which reward they would choose given the choice, I might never learn that some would gladly exchange a week of PTO for a few days of paid volunteer work on company time. Knowing your employees is the best way to discover relevant benefits offerings they will want to use. With choice and personalization, leaders can offer the most competitive rewards. Does this mean highly customized healthcare? Yes. Does it mean additional organizational perks that drive individuals to go above and beyond? Also yes. Just as compensation comes with bonuses and rate changes for merit and equity, perks and benefits can come with flexibility based on how people want to be rewarded. That process of personalization may look different for every company, but those that act first will lead the way. Forbes Human Resources Council is an invitation-only organization for HR executives across all industries. Do I qualify?
The Herald
08-05-2025
- Politics
- The Herald
The hard truth about why we still need employment equity
It's been 30 years of our constitutional democracy, and the subject is back in the news. Do we still need employment equity? No more than those mainly white, all male cast of 135 cardinal electors circling around the Vatican in bright purple gowns need a 21st century shake-up. Truth is, I have never believed in employment equity. There are smart and competent black people as much as there are smart and competent white people. Given equal chances, all South Africans would stand a fair chance of being selected for a job. That's the problem right there: we do not have equal chances available for every jobseeker. Ask a person with disabilities, ask a rural worker with little English, ask a black professional in the private sector, ask an immigrant academic with excellent credentials. Employment equity is needed to compensate for the inability of white people to see and reward black talent. It is as simple as that. I find it perplexing that the people fighting against employment equity for blacks are precisely those who benefited from centuries of job reservation for whites. The sheer arrogance of it all. The facts matter: senior positions in the private sector are still dominated by whites and males, and you are much more likely to obtain a job outside government if you're a white male graduate than anyone else. Nowhere is this more evident than in the ways elite public and private schools are organised in SA. Drive the main road snaking from the City Bowl to Fish Hoek, and you will find some of the most expensive, white majority schools on the African continent. Through a process called enclosure, these white majority schools have found ingenious ways of hoarding resources for the benefit of their own while actively excluding in enrolments and staffing those who are black and poor. The mechanisms of exclusion include place of residence, the capacity to pay and previous connections to the school. We have detailed these strategies in our book, Who gets in and why? True, as a matter of conscience, the white privileges of these schools are offset somewhat by smaller numbers of black middle-class students, including those from wealthy families. But their smaller numbers make the point that these are careful political calculations rather than any genuine concern for the underclasses. No child from Khayelitsha can walk into Springfield Girls or Bishops no matter how smart they might be unless special arrangements are made. Here is the racial and class advantage: if you go to one of these schools, you will not be unemployed because of the market value signalled by where you studied and, of course, your superior marks that give you access to high-value degrees in commerce, medicine and engineering. With a university degree you, the product of elite schools, do not even have to worry about fighting for a job in SA; you can travel and find work anywhere in the world. I believe that one of the reasons that employment equity is being pushed in the present by white politicians is because of the permissive politics inspired by Donald Trump. If you want to make our government look bad (and by the way, they do a good job of this all by themselves), this is your chance. You can even get a ticket to the US by claiming white oppression (don't laugh). There is, however, a dark and twisted side to equity that goes under the name xenophobia. You might not have noticed but there is a huge disinformation campaign on university campuses under way right now claiming that universities such as Wits and Fort Hare employ more foreign nationals, especially Zimbabweans, than South Africans. This is a blatant lie, but it has taken on a truth of its own in the metaverse. Not that it should matter. A university is not a government department and throughout the world higher education institutions thrive when their doors are open to the best talent and expertise from anywhere in the world. The despicable spectacle in parliament the other day when a MP from the Patriotic Alliance grilled the vice-chancellor of the Central University of Technology for appointing a foreign national instead of a black South African was a low point in our national discourse around university appointments. Here was a black Trump with the same bag of grievances: that foreigners are taking our jobs. The pathetic politician insisted that his native candidate was 'excellent' based simply on the fact that the person had a PhD (seriously) when what was sought was a dean of an engineering school for which a range of competences apply, including a superb record of research accomplishment. Xenophobia, in such cases, is simply employment equity dressed up in camouflage uniform fighting other Africans. Beware.
