You don't need a corporate-sized budget to create an exceptional employee experience. What you do need is intentionality, creativity, and the courage to listen before spending.
That was the central message from our recent Fireside Chat with Japneet, a People & Culture Leader who spent a decade building HR foundations at SMBs, and Erin Schnor, an Executive Recruiter at Artemis, who’s helped growing companies attract top talent.
Here's what we learned about competing for talent when you're working with limited resources...
Big companies have budgets. Small companies have agility - and that’s an even bigger advantage.
"SMBs can compete because they're nimble and they're fast," Erin explained. "That can translate to your benefits and perks as well."
She shared how during the pandemic, smaller tech companies were able to add mental health support and personal days within weeks when they saw employees struggling with childcare and caregiving responsibilities.
"At Artemis, they noticed employees were maxing out their therapy budgets every year. Within two weeks, they reallocated their wellness bonus and online therapy platform budget into a flexible healthcare spending account. Try making that kind of pivot at a 10,000+ person company!"
Build rapid feedback-to-action-loops into your benefits strategy by reviewing usage every few months and empower your team to make small pivots quickly. You’ll get outsize engagement results.
One size fits all benefits are officially over.
"The best benefit strategy typically starts with listening and not spending." Japneet emphasized. "The one solution or one model fits all doesn't exist anymore."
Understanding your workforce goes beyond basic demographics. With multiple generations in the workplace and employees at vastly different life stages, pulse surveys, stay interviews, and regular check-ins are essential for knowing what your people actually value.
Japneet recommends conducting benefit-specific pulse surveys at least once a year, asking quick questions like:
Compare this feedback against utilization reports from your benefits broker to get the full picture.
Key Insight: Data doesn’t always mean dashboards. Use human feedback to shape where your limited dollars go. Listening is your cheapest and most strategic tool.
Some of the most effective benefits cost little to nothing to implement. Here are real examples that made a difference:
Flexible Fridays:
At one of Japneet's previous organizations, they introduced Flexible Fridays which give employees autonomy to manage their time for deep work, professional development, or personal commitments. The cost? Zero dollars. The result? Increased trust, stronger culture, and better work-life balance. "When you offer flexibility like this, you'd be surprised with how much more employees are able to accomplish because they really do want to prove themselves and show that they can be trusted," Japneet noted.
Phased Return from Parental Leave:
Both Erin and Japneet experienced phased returns to work after maternity leave and couldn't speak highly enough of it. Instead of going from zero to full-time overnight, parents gradually increase their hours over several weeks. The key? Check in with employees about a month before their planned return date to understand what they need and what their phased approach should look like. Have a plan ready for them. "There's not a cost to it at face value, but there's a huge value when it comes to the confidence of someone who is coming back to work," Erin shared.
Baby Days:
Erin's husband's company offered an extra two weeks of "baby days" during the first year. This is flexible time that the birth or non-birth parent could use for illness, appointments, or just survival. Babies get sick and new parents need support beyond the initial leave period.
Other Quick Wins:
Key Insight: Flexibility isn’t just a perk, it’s a strategic lever for performance and retention. When employees have real control over how, when and where they work, they design their schedules around energy and outcomes, not just outdated expectations. That autonomy builds trust, boosts engagement and strengthens culture without adding cost. For SMBs, flexibility is one of the few benefits that scales effortlessly as business grows.
Some things have shifted from "nice to have" to "must have" – even for the smallest teams:
Benefits from Day One: "It used to be a negotiation tool," Erin explained. "Now it's kind of expected that they're in place, even at very small companies and that they start from day one."
For companies under 10 employees, this doesn't mean you need a full traditional benefits plan. Health spending accounts or flexible benefit platforms like Honeybee allow employees to allocate dollars where they need them most. Group benefit programs like TechLife (through Manulife) let small companies access competitive benefits at shared costs.
Intentional Flexibility: Post-COVID, if you're asking employees to work hybrid or in-office, you need a clear "why." "After everyone lived through COVID and showed that for the most part, we could do our jobs remotely, when you're asking people no longer to do it fully remote, companies need to have the why ready," Erin said.
Key Insight: stating you're flexible isn't enough. You need to model it. If your office clears out at 3pm because everyone needs to pick up kids, acknowledge it and make it part of your culture rather than something people feel guilty about. Don’t just say you’re flexible. Codify it. Communicate it. Celebrate it!
Tradition benefits plans often fall short on modern family and reproductive health.
"I've seen a lot of individuals just looking for better support," Japneet shared, speaking from her own five-year fertility journey. "There's so much more to it than just IVF coverage. You've got to think about adoption, surrogacy, miscarriage support, egg freezing, alternative treatments."
The challenge extends beyond traditional family planning. With diverse family structures including LGBT couples, single parents, and blended families, benefits need to reflect modern realities. And it's not just a women's issue but male factor infertility accounts for 30-50% of infertility cases.
Even without budget for fertility coverage, SMBs can offer:
Key Insight: Inclusive benefits aren’t about adding costs, they’re about removing blind spots.
The key to maximizing limited resources? Look at your total rewards holistically and understand utilization patterns. "Credits-based benefits" are gaining traction, allowing employees to allocate a set amount toward what matters most to them, whether that's additional mental health support, gym memberships, professional development, or family building assistance.
"Not everyone needs the same support," Japneet explained. "Where can you add that level of personalization within the organization without increasing the overall spend?"
Partnership strategies can also help. Beyond group benefit plans, consider:
Key Insight: Small budgets can go far when you think in systems, not silos.
Even the best benefits are worthless if employees don't know about them or understand how to use them. "Benefits only matter if the employees actually know how to use them and know that they're there," Japneet emphasized.
Regular communication, onboarding education, and making benefits information easily accessible are crucial parts of any benefits strategy.
The Bottom Line
SMBs can't always match enterprise salaries or benefits dollar-for-dollar. But they can offer something equally valuable: flexibility, personalization, and the ability to quickly respond to employee needs. As Erin puts it, "I think going back to what Japneet said: there's an element of listening. When you're an SMB, you just have a smaller employee pool, and so you can listen to the needs and probably cater to them to a higher degree."
Your competitive advantage isn't your budget but it's your ability to truly understand your people and create benefits that match their lived experiences.
Small budgets. Big Impact. That’s the SMB advantage.
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