We often ask pharmacy owners why they set up their company retirement plan or any other company benefit. The most common answer we receive is it was the right thing to do. While we never want to remove the nobility of providing these types of benefits, we do want to point out that there are certain things that all benefits should be designed to do.
All benefits should be designed to do the following:
- Attract Great Talent - if you are not trying to attact the best talent in your pharmacy, then we feel that you may be handcuffing the potential of the pharmacy. A pharmacy 401k plan could really set you apart in the market place when you need to cherrypick a new employee.
- Retain Great Talent - one of our client's lost an employee because the employee thought "the grass was greener on the other side." What she meant is that the other pharmacy had perceived better benefits (see below about how to effectively create the benefit in the mind of the employees). The pharmacy owner that lost this talent told us shortly after that he wanted his "grass to be pretty darn green on his side of the fence." It took him losing a really valuable employee to see this. You can learn from this and start thinking about how you can retain your top talent.
- Reward Great Talent - when you have people that help you be successful, a great thing you can do is reward them for their hard work. Your employees are one of your largest assets and it is good to treat them that way. A pharmacy 401k with a profit sharing plan can help you do these things.
Please keep in mind that, no matter what you do for benefits, it is important to communicate them, even a 401k plan. We have a saying at waypoint that "an uncommunicated benefit is no benefit at all." It has been our experience that employees only think they earn in compensation whatever is on their paycheck for that pay period. They have no idea actually the cost to the company for employing them. Sitting down with them once a year to explain their true compensation (including 401k match and/or profit sharing) is critical to making your grass "appear pretty darn green" as the pharmacy owner said to us.
Working on these things can really help you protect the pharmacy against defections, attract the best workers possible, and reward your people for success.