Start-ups have woken up to the fact that health and life insurance benefits can no longer be the preserve of large corporates, according to Charlie Cousins, founder of Hooray Health & Protection.
Cousins (pictured) spoke to Health & Protection on the release of the firm’s What Workers Want 2021 survey.
One of the key findings from the survey of 641 employees at start-ups across the UK was that when asked to choose their top three most desired benefits, more than half (57%) chose health insurance, closely followed by life insurance (45%).
Four in 10 (41%) went for additional holiday entitlement, while 35% opted for a generous pension scheme.
Reflecting on the findings, Cousins said they signified rapid change across the start-up sector.
“We’re seeing that, especially within the tech start-up industry and a number of industries within that, they’re getting a large amount of investment from venture capital investment and different areas,” he said.
“And employees are being rewarded with benefits that would have historically only been offered by your large corporates.
“I would say that every client we have dealt with over the last three months has been a start-up and the take up rate is considerably higher. The conversion rate has been a lot higher in the start-up industry.”
Spreading benefits to staff
Cousins explained this is because start-ups know if they want to attract and retain the best talent, they need to reward their employees and as the age demographic of start-up employees is very young, health and protection benefits are “very affordable”.
But Cousins added start-up bosses do not see benefits as the preserve of the leadership team.
“It’s what can we offer to all our staff? What’s the best staff benefit? I think the owners of start-ups are starting to put employees first,” Cousins continued.
“I’m not saying other companies haven’t done that in the past but historically there would be a tendency for benefit levels to be increased for more senior employees.
“We’re not seeing this across start-ups. We’re seeing start-ups trying to give the best benefit package to attract and retain the best talent.”
Other key findings from the survey included:
- More than nine in 10 (93%) said they received workplace benefits and 77% were happy with the benefits they received.
- Over half (55%) believed their benefits package was better than average, 23% suspected it was about the same and 20% thought it was worse.
- Three-quarters (78%) said their employer had sought feedback on employee benefits and 88% felt their benefits aided their sense of wellbeing.
