40 percent of small and medium-sized companies have difficulties in attracting and retaining qualified personnel for their company. In the previous year, the level was the same at 39 percent. This is the result of the SME study by the market researcher Today and Tomorrow on behalf of Gothaer Versicherung.
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The differences between small and larger companies are interesting: while 44 percent of companies with 11 to 20 employees have these difficulties, the figure is only 28 percent for small businesses with one to ten employees. The larger the company, the greater the recruitment problems.
Company health insurance is still rare in small companies
The companies have developed various strategies in order to be attractive to skilled workers. For example, 28 percent of companies offer their employees a company pension scheme, as many as in 2020. However, there are differences between smaller and larger companies: Almost half (47 percent) of large companies have a company pension in their program. But the smaller the company, the less often it is offered. Company health insurance (bKV) is currently only offered by 10 percent of SMEs.
“The concern about too much effort and too high costs is probably what drives SMEs to forego a company pension scheme or bKV”, assumes Gothaer sales director Oliver Brüß. “But this concern is actually unfounded. Thanks to digital management, even small companies can offer company pension schemes and health insurance without great administrative effort and thus also score points when it comes to recruiting employees, ”says Brüß.
Working today should be flexible
Other measures, on the other hand, are used much more frequently. This includes, for example, flexible working hours. 43 percent of the companies surveyed use this. In addition, 47 percent of those questioned have a part-time offer, 39 percent have flexitime.
Also attractive for families and temporarily a mandatory offer due to the pandemic: the home office. Every second SME (48 percent) relies on working from home to make it easier to combine work and family. In the previous year it was 9 percentage points less. Large companies in particular with more than 200 employees support the desk at home with 56 percent.
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