What are local benefits packages?
Local benefits packages enable you to choose from 3 pre-created benefits packages and offer country-tailored benefits to your team. The benefits range from health and life insurance, perks, allowances, and pension and vary from country to country.
What are the benefits of offering local benefits packages to my team?
- They help you stay compliant, competitive, fair, and meet team expectations
- Choose easily from pre-created benefits packages: Essential, Competitive, or Best-in-class.
- Skip the research and admin. We got you covered through managing relationships with multiple local vendors, building packages, enrolling and supporting your team, and more.
In which countries can I offer local benefits?
- Local benefits packages are available in Poland, India, Spain, Netherlands, and more.
- Oyster also offers local benefits to teams in United States and Canada.
- These do not currently include packages but they are coming soon.
FAQs
What are the 3 benefits packages?
- Essential: Statutory and other common benefits tailored to a specific country
- Competitive: Benefits most local employers in a specific country offer
- Best-in-class: Premium benefits that set you apart
To remain non-discriminatory, it is important to enroll all of your Team Members into the same benefits package.
How do I enroll my Team Member into a local benefits package?
There are 2 ways to enroll your team member into local benefits: from the hiring flow or from the in-app benefits flow.
From the hiring flow:
- After you fill out the compensation details, you will be taken to the Benefits section of the hiring form.
- Select a benefits package based on your company’s benefits strategy. Here's some recommendations on which to choose:
- Competitive - to offer benefits that most local employers in that specific country offer and want to remain competitive
- Best-in-class - to offer premium benefits that set you apart
- Essential - to offer statutory and common benefits
- To remain non-discriminatory, it is important to enroll all of your Team Members into the same benefits package.
- You can also choose to select health add-ons on top of your package. The add-ons include health benefits provided by SafetyWing
- Make a selection to see the total estimated monthly costs. NOTE This cost includes the benefits fee that Oyster charges to handle the whole lifecycle of benefits—local market and vendor research, building packages, enrollment, vendor relationships, and more—reducing the admin and monetary costs for you.
From the benefits flow:
- Click People > Benefits from the left menu in your Oyster account.
- On the Benefits page, review the list of engaged Team Members and their benefits enrollment status. Click Enroll benefits to enroll a Team Member into benefits.
- The Request Benefits Enrollment page opens. Select a plan.
You will see local benefits plan options for India, Poland, United States, and Canada and global benefits provider Allianz for other countries.
- Click Send Request. Wait for the success message to appear.
- The Oyster support team will now begin the enrollment process along with the benefits vendors.
How do Local benefits packages help me remain competitive and fair?
- Competitive: Our benefits experts undertook research on what local employers in a given country offer to build the Competitive plan that helps you compete with other employers and attract top talent
- Fair: Locally optimized benefits take into account the country’s statutory laws and local market conditions to offer benefits that are fair to employees in a given location.
To remain non-discriminatory, Oyster always recommends enrolling all Team Members in a given location into the same benefits package.
How does the enrollment process work?
- Companies can select the package they want to enroll their new hires in directly from the hiring form or from the benefits page of their account.
- The Oyster support team will contact Team Members to start the enrollment process. Team Members will have the option to opt out.
Packages across countries vary. How will this help me offer a similar or standard benefits experience across all my team members?
Each country has its own benefits legislation, and access to benefits also varies. For example, Germany has great statutory health insurance and it’s generally unusual for companies to offer supplementary insurance there whereas in the United States, healthcare and benefits are not centralized.
The benefits you offer must:
- Comply with and supplement the local laws
- Align with your compensation and rewards approach
- Be competitive with what local employers offer
- Ensure easy access to doctors, hospitals, tests, claims, and more
Offering local benefits helps you remain fair to your team, competitive against local employers, and cost-efficient.
