Are Church Benefits Competitive? Your Staff Holds the Answer

Ever wondered why some church staff seem to radiate satisfaction while others carry the weight of the world on their shoulders? The answer may lie in the hidden power of a well-crafted benefits package. Welcome back to the Healthy Church Staff Podcast with me, Todd Rhodes, where we're not just talking about fair wages, but diving into the comprehensive world of compensation benefits based on our latest church staff health assessment. In our recent discussions, we discovered that a fair number of church staff members are split down the middle on their benefits – with as many content as there are displeased or indifferent. 

Join me as we unravel the intricacies behind these mixed feelings and chart out actionable blueprints for elevating benefit satisfaction within your team. You'll learn why conducting a deep comparison of your benefits against similar organizations can be eye-opening, and why setting up a task force might just be the innovative approach your church needs. It's not enough to have a solid benefits package; we've got to ensure that our team fully comprehends and maximizes the benefits available to them. No guest this time, just you and me – and a wealth of strategies that could help transform your church staff's outlook on their compensation benefits. Let's navigate these waters together and aim for a future where every staff member not only knows their worth but feels it too, through the benefits they receive.

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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:07

Hi there, welcome to this episode of the Healthy Church Staff Podcast. I'm your host, todd Rhodes. I'm also one of the group founders over at chemistrystaffingcom, and in today's episode we're tackling another crucial aspect of employee well-being and that is compensation benefits. We've been talking about compensation and some of the results from our 2023 church staff health assessment this week on the podcast, and last year, when we did our church staff health assessment, we found that just over half of church staff about 53% are satisfied with their current benefits package and while this is a good start, it's a good starting point. 53% nearly an equal proportion are either of staff members if your church is normal are either dissatisfied or neutral when it comes to, not their compensation, but their benefits package Okay, insurance, vacation, all that kind of thing. And today we're going to explore what contributes to these perceptions and have a little discussion just you and me, on some practical strategies for improving benefits satisfaction.

Speaker 1: 1:16

Okay, so let's first of all, let's break down the numbers a little bit. Take a look at those survey results. Out of all the staff that we surveyed and there were a little over a thousand last year that answered our survey about 53% said that they agree that they're satisfied with their current benefits package. Again, not compensation, we're talking benefits, things that include, like health insurance, retirement plans, pto, paid time off, those kind of things. So 53% are satisfied. About 28% say they're dissatisfied, but 19% are neutral on that. So those numbers tell us that, while the majority of staff are content, if your church is average, there's still significant room for improvement, as there usually is on all of these metrics of church staff health. And, as church leaders, if you're responsible for compensation packages or your staff, it's your responsibility and our responsibility to understand the reasons behind the dissatisfaction and take some action to address it. What can you do to enhance this benefit satisfaction among your staff?

Speaker 1: 2:22

Let me give you four or five different strategies here. Okay, five, I think, to be exact. The first one is and we talked about this yesterday go back and listen to it if you need to, but yesterday we talked about doing benchmarking on compensation and we're going to ask you probably to do the same thing on reviewing your benefits package. Okay, and this probably doesn't need to be done every year, maybe every two years, though Every couple of years take a deep dive into your current benefits package. Compare it with similar churches, compare it with similar institutions and industries. Compare it to your local school system, compare it to other churches, compare it to maybe some local non-profits. But doing kind of a comprehensive benefits review will let you know what others are doing in your space and similar type of roles, but also, maybe what you should be doing. So that's the first thing is every couple of years, just do conduct some kind of a comprehensive benefits review. If you need some help doing that, reach out to me. Podcast at chemistrystaffingcom and we can help you with this. We do this for churches quite often to help them with both compensation and benefits reviews. It's one of the services that we offer. So that's the first one Every couple of years, do that benefits review.

Speaker 1: 3:43

Okay, the second idea for you might be one that you would want to consider. Now, this isn't going to work for every church, but particularly if you have a large church or you could also do this at the board level or at the elder level is create I don't like the word committee, maybe task force, maybe that's a better word, I don't know but invite a few people to join a small group to discuss and propose, maybe improvements to the benefits package. Here, no-transcript You're communicating a commitment to meeting the needs of the staff and to actually looking for some innovative ways to make that compensation and benefits package better. And it's going to help you, just from a communication standpoint with those on your team, to be able to say, hey, we're actually looking at different ways that we can make our benefits package better. So that's a second way. A third way is maybe offer some benefits education.

Speaker 1: 4:48

Many staff members may not fully understand their benefits or how to maximize them. They might not even know what their benefits are or, like I said, they might not understand how to utilize them, and I see this happen quite often. I know a church that, as many churches do, offer a matching contribution to a retirement account. But it's matching right. So you have to encourage. If it's 2% or 3%, hey, if the staff member contributes 2% of their salary, the church will also match that, but if the person doesn't, then the church doesn't match it. So a lot of times those are benefits that just maybe need a little bit more education. In particular, I found with that specific benefit, younger staff members that are long ways away from retirement think, oh, it's just two or three percent, but that's huge. Once they see that two or three percent that the church is matching. It's free money, but they just need to be educated on that.

Speaker 1: 5:51

You can host, maybe, some information sessions in your staff meetings, help staff navigate their benefits and make informed decisions. You can also do that individually as well. Okay, another way that you can do this is to introduce new benefits based on the feedback, in kind of that second one that we did. You can survey your staff to understand what benefits make maybe they would value the most where they feel like those gaps exist. This is going to do a couple things. It's going to give you some valuable input, but it's also going to make those people that are neutral or dissatisfied feel like you're actually listening and soliciting some feedback. You can use this feedback to introduce some new benefits or maybe modify some existing ones to better align with, kind of what your staff is looking at. So, bottom line, it's really important to remember that benefit satisfaction is not a one-time achievement. It requires ongoing effort, it requires a commitment to continuous improvement and by regularly reviewing your benefits package and by benchmarking against other industry standards and other churches and involving staff in the process, you can really make a big difference in creating a comprehensive and competitive benefits program that supports and values your team.

Speaker 1: 7:04

And the other thing just a side note I think I mentioned this yesterday is that all of your benefits package doesn't have to be high dollar items. It could be, maybe, being generous with the pay time off. It can be a number, it could be a spa membership or a gym membership or reimbursement for cell phones Some of those things that aren't like thousands of dollars but are things that people will just really look at and think, wow, that's really cool. Cell phone companies do this all the time. If you get this certain plan, then you get free streaming or you get this. Or T-Mobile has the free Tuesdays where you get special things every Tuesday. Those kind of extra little perks make people feel special, but a lot of times they don't cost your church any money or very little money. Those are the things that really get creative and innovative with some of those. But remember that your benefits package adds onto your compensation and it invests in your staff's well-being and it's not just a nice thing to do, it's a really strategic thing to do and it can have a profound impact on your staff retention, on morale and overall church health.

Speaker 1: 8:17

As I leave this episode, I want to give you one final thought and think about this. Your staff are your most valuable asset and by prioritizing their wellbeing and their satisfaction, you're not only doing the right thing because you are, but you're also setting your church up and those staff members up for long-term success. Okay, if you have any questions at all about compensation and if we can help you with any of these benchmarking, doing a compensation study or anything it's one of the services we do here at chemistry. You can reach out to me anytime at the email address podcast at chemistry staffingcom, and we are in the middle, actually past the middle coming up on our end of our 2024 church staff health assessment. If you have not taken that yet, I would encourage you to head over to churchstaffassessmentcom. Take that, it's absolutely free. Take you about 10 or 15 minutes to go through the 50 questions that we have, but we will give you a detailed report on your answers afterwards and let you know how you're doing in seven key areas of church staff health. I think you'll find it really fascinating, really interesting and really helpful for you as a church staff person. Again, you can take that today right over at churchstaffassessmentcom.

Speaker 1: 9:30

I'm Todd Rhodes. Thank you so much for joining us today here on the Healthy Church Staff Podcast. Hope you'll join us again here tomorrow. We're going to continue our talk and our series this week on church staff health, but more specifically on compensation and satisfaction as a church staff member, so I hope you'll join us. Thanks for listening.