For a company to acquire top talent and compete with another company for those employees, they have to provide benefits that are more than those required by law. Social security and workers compensation are required by the federal government to be provided for employees, health insurance and retirement benefits are not required, and therefore only a small percentage of small business or medium size businesses offer those benefits to their employees. The question becomes then how are businesses acquiring top talent if they cannot compete with other companies that provide those extra benefits? Follow the links below to read more about this and other topics.
5 ways to start the small business benefits conversation
For business owners, attracting and retaining quality employees is always a challenge — especially as unemployment rates decline across the country. As fewer people look for jobs, employers need to find ways to entice candidates to accept their offers and, perhaps even more crucial, to keep good talent from potentially leaving for better offers.
Providing a competitive benefit package is one proven way for employers to attract and retain the best of the best.
But does this resonate with small-business owners? Not so much. In fact, most aren’t offering benefits at all, according to the 2015 Principal Financial Group® Business Owner Survey, conducted by Harris Interactive. Somewhat shocking details from the survey — which measured the responses of business owners with two to 500 employees — found that only slightly more than one-third, just 37 percent, offer group coverage or employee benefits.
JOSH MABUS — Hand in hand, small business and industry
There seems to be a debate in many cities, in our own state and across the country. Do we invest in small businesses, which employ lots of people as a group but are individually volatile and have lower economic impacts? Or do we invest in attracting corporations, which can be demanding and hard to come by?
We often talk about small business and large-scale employers as if they are mutually exclusive. It’s a debate as old as time. Which came first: the chicken or the egg?
Our nation is home to somewhere around 26 million small businesses, which make up 60 to 80 percent of all U.S. job creation, according to Entrepreneur Magazine.
Small business accounts for the most job creation because of the shear number of small businesses. Their sizes allow them to be more agile and make incremental hires. Those hires, when multiplied 26 million times, have a huge national impact.
Democrats, GOP Reps Demand IRS Return Money to Small Businesses
A bipartisan group of Congressmen on the House Ways and Means Oversight Subcommittee sent a letter to Treasury Secretary Jack Lew demanding the government return money to small businesses that the IRS had wrongfully seized under federal asset forfeiture laws.
“As the Treasury Secretary, you have the opportunity to right the wrong done to these small business owners,” the Congressional letter writers said, adding, “You have the discretion to return the seized funds to their rightful owners.”
It’s a rare move made by the Congressmen to circumvent the IRS, which they say has been devastating small businesses with its “abusive” seizures of bank accounts the agency thinks are being used for, say, drug transactions or money laundering.
