How core benefits help your teams and your business thrive

Once, your company only had to worry about competitors in the same city — at most, in the same part of the country. Now, you need to hone your competitive edge internationally by providing employee benefits packages to a remote team, wherever they work for you.

For many companies, that’s the hardest part. You’re the expert at navigating the legal and regulatory requirements, employee expectations, and cultural norms in your own part of the world. But how can you stay on top of all these factors when you’re building employee benefits packages for teams in multiple other countries?

Don’t worry: Remote has you covered.

We have deep local expertise and group purchasing power. We can build benefits packages for the team members you onboard through our global employment services in dozens of countries world-wide.

How? Your international workforce is part of your team, logging in and working on your platforms like everyone else. But the paperwork shows Remote serving as the employer of record (EOR). This offers you several advantages, one of the most important being our capacity to source competitive core benefits.

According to Remote’s Global Benefits Report, 60% of employees say they’ve chosen one job over another for a better benefits package.

Enhancing employee benefits is also a key means of keeping top talent, with 78% of company decision-makers stating they’ve seen greater employee retention after adding or improving their benefits packages.

Once an employer has aligned benefits to meet or exceed employee expectations, retention soars.

What are core benefits?

There are four components in the basket of core benefits that employees expect globally. In most industries in most countries, governments either provide these benefits as part of the social safety net or require employers to provide them.

1. Health insurance covers medical treatment that can be accessed in a timely manner at any point in an employee’s life. This benefit often includes vision and dental plans.

2. Life insurance protects employees’ families against lost income and helps in building added financial security.

3. Disability insurance safeguards an employee against income loss in the event of an accident or illness that makes it impossible for them to work.

4. Retirement funds and pension plans provide employees with peace of mind. They know their families will continue to enjoy an appropriate standard of living after they exit the workforce.

Where a national government program already provides one of these benefits, an employer is typically not required to offer that same benefit. In some cases — for example, strong public health insurance in Australia — employers can eschew health insurance in favor of other benefits that’ll make them more competitive.

Any statutory benefits not provided by the government must be specifically folded into a company’s benefits program. And all employer-provided benefits programs must comply with the laws and regulations of the jurisdiction where an employee works.

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Robust benefits programs boost trust – and retention

Employers around the world are facing increased challenges in filling open roles. With the best-prepared employees in high demand, it’s worthwhile to consider offering robust and localized benefits.

Experts note that it can cost employers more when they don’t offer core benefits as part of a robust compensation package. The cost of filling vacant positions resulting from the turnover of dissatisfied employees can amount to multiple months (or more than an entire year) of the salary for that role.

Offering a strong core benefits program is also the socially responsible thing to do. Doing so demonstrates to employees that the company sees overall wellbeing as a priority. To achieve this goal, employers should focus on minimizing benefits differences from country to country.

Here’s one Bucharest-based employee’s experience, after she discovered that her company’s British employees were receiving a pension plan, extra health coverage, free lunches, and other perks: “I constantly felt like they didn’t care as much about the employees in Eastern Europe, who barely got any benefits…I quit after a year, even though they offered me a raise to try to get me to stay. I’ve also told friends in the local tech community that they aren’t a great company to consider working for.”

Nadia Vatalidis, Remote’s VP of People, has this to say:

“If some employees don’t get the same standard of benefits as their colleagues because of where they live, the disparity will make them feel like they don’t truly belong in your organization. This in turn will have a big impact on productivity and retention.”

One size doesn’t fit all

To attract and keep the best talent any market has to offer, offer competitive core benefits. It doesn’t matter whether you’re based in Rome or Tangiers, Singapore or Buenos Aires — benefits matter. A company’s reputation for benefit equity quickly becomes part of its brand within an industry. So demonstrate your commitment to equity by providing comparable employee experiences for your team, regardless of where they log in.

Your job is to make sure your teams have their basic needs met with benefits that are truly useful to them in each of your locations — whether you or the government provides these benefits. You don’t want a benefit to turn into a net negative for your employees.

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In looking at benefits, an employer must understand what teams working in a specific country need and want. A one-size-fits-all benefits package, structured identically in all countries in which the employer does business, just isn’t going to work.

In some cases, offering a blanket benefits program can be detrimental to the interests of employees. Their countries might impose additional taxes on an unwanted or unneeded benefit, or they might be forced to deal with onerous paperwork filings with their governments. You’ll also save significant sums of money when you don’t have to pay for unnecessary benefits.

Fair equity and total rewards

This is where the concept of “fair equity” comes in.

Fair equity refers to providing every employee with not just the benefits required by law, but also the additional benefits that support them in making the best of their personal and professional lives.

Think about global benefits more as total rewards. It’s counterproductive to try to achieve surface equality. What you’re really trying to do is give every member of your team the logistical and financial support they need to perform at their best.

In some countries, this might involve larger salaries to compensate for benefits that might be hard to access or not necessary if the government offers equivalent programs.

Lifestyle benefits enhance core benefits

A core benefits package is different in kind from a lifestyle benefits package, also known as perks. Lifestyle benefits go above and beyond core or statutory benefits to enhance employees’ comfort, enjoyment, and physical, emotional, and financial wellness.

They can include support for maintaining a home office, professional or personal skill-building opportunities, flexible working hours, and family and social benefits, such as childcare and paid parental leave.

While not required as part of a package designed to meet employees’ basic needs, lifestyle benefits are increasingly expected. They’re particularly attractive to the best talent applying for positions with top international companies.

Look at adding these perks alongside your core benefits packages. They can help you build trust, increase employee engagement, and maintain your competitive edge.

A typical benefits stack includes healthcare, dental and vision insurance, and a pension plan. The lifestyle benefits of a modern benefits stack typically include:

• Wellness and mental health care

• Flexible hours

• Home office and coworking allowances

• And generous paid leave policies

With these, you’re ready to attract and maintain the best talent the world has to offer.

Parental leave is important from the standpoint of fair equity as a proven equalizer for working women. Paid parental leave is also important for the parent who hasn’t given birth, allowing them to bond with their child. As Vatalidis says, “Providing equal opportunity for time off to welcome a new family member is crucial for an employee to bring their best self to work.”

Following the lead of companies that know what benefits to offer their employees

Companies that excel in the global marketplace understand how benefits attract and keep top talent. Two standout examples of this are Remote and German company commercetools. Each has applied unique strategies to improve its workforce.

Remote has set a high standard for internal employee benefits. Our robust benefits package includes the following:

• Unlimited personal time off

• Flexible working hours

• Health benefits that meet local needs

• And much more

Remote also offers perks such as company stock options, a learning budget, and mental health support.

These benefits have been pivotal in helping us rapidly expand our team, which now numbers over 1,000 employees across six continents. It’s a diverse and inclusive workplace culture that attracts high-caliber talent across the world.

The company commercetools previously faced challenges with inconsistent benefits across different countries. That hindered their ability to get the best candidates. Their benefits also lacked stock options.

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In partnering with Remote, commercetools was able to standardize and enhance their international benefits. Remote’s expertise made sure compliance happened and helped drive satisfaction across commercetools’ expanding global team.

How core health benefits and others will change in the future

The landscape of health benefits is shifting toward preventive measures.

For example, consider:

• Gym memberships

• Mental health days

• Regular health screenings

A proactive approach to health shines a light on employee well-being.

Advances in AI and data analytics are driving these trends to become more personalized. Additionally, the expansion of telemedicine services is providing more and more employees with convenient access to healthcare. That includes remote consultations and digital health monitoring tools.

What core benefits will look like

Expect core benefits to broaden significantly in the future. Family benefits will likely see enhancements, whether that’s extended parental leave, fertility treatments, or increased support for elder care.

Well-being perks, including mental health support and stress management courses, will also expand.

Education and continuous learning will become more commonplace, with companies investing in lifelong education credits or forming partnerships with educational platforms.

Financial wellness programs will become more prevalent, offering support such as student loan assistance and better retirement planning. You may also see compensation strategies such as crypto salaries.

With remote and hybrid work on the rise with no signs of slowing down, home office allowances and coworking space memberships will become standard in many industries.

Carbon offset credits will likely be offered for commuting, too. And in general, sustainability initiatives will likely reflect society’s growing support for more eco-friendly practices.

Working with an employer of record simplifies everything

You’ve seen how challenging it is to create meaningful, compliant benefits packages for a distributed workforce. Doing so involves painstaking, complex strategy and negotiation.

If you were to establish your own corporate bank accounts, business registrations, human resources teams, and benefits packages in a new country, you might be waiting as long as a year before you could even do business.

Remote provides you with all the local experience needed to let you and your employees hit the ground running.

Our benefits teams have developed the expertise that allows them to craft benefits packages directed to the needs of employees in each country where we do business.

We navigate the toughest parts of the job for you: negotiating terms, conducting market research, and handling the full range of associated administrative tasks, all with no marked-up premiums or extra administrative fees.

The added value of working with a knowledgeable partner also minimizes your risk as you expand internationally. This should be a partner that can consistently liaise with the right entities on the ground to structure and manage every type of benefits plan, and minimize your risk as you expand internationally.

Our ability to offer large group plans means that we can offer you highly competitive rates (in many countries starting as low as $113 per month) on the full range of pension plans and medical, life, and disability coverage for your employees.

The benefits industry is a numbers game, so it’s especially difficult to establish in-country benefits for smaller teams. If you try to build a benefits package for a single employee in, say, the Czech Republic, local insurance brokers may not want to deal with the risk involved in proportion to the premiums received.

And, if that one employee goes on to file a claim for hospitalization due to an auto accident, you’ll likely see your premiums skyrocket.

Working with Remote, you can take advantage of our strength in numbers. In building market-specific benefits packages for hundreds or thousands of employees in a country, we can help you access premium rates from top brokers.

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With Remote on your side, you’ll be able to concentrate on building your teams and growing your business while we handle the administration and the paperwork.

Our in-depth experience and networks of relationships with diverse groups of local providers around the world enable Remote to offer core compensation packages. These benefits are geared to the labor and payroll laws of each country where we maintain a presence.