Mutual Benefits

"Benefits are for employees, but for the business, there can be lots of benefits in offering benefits," says Silverstein. "Done right, benefits make recruiting good people easier, build morale and tie employees closer to the company."

"Benefits programs can have unexpected payoffs that strengthen the health of a business," agrees David Bollier, a researcher for think tank The Business Enterprise Trust in Stanford, California, and author of Aiming Higher (Amacom), a study of 25 successful companies that put an emphasis on doing good while earning profits. "Benefits really foster a sense of `We're all in this together,' of collaboration between workers and management.

"Take a worker's needs into account, and that worker will feel incredible loyalty toward you. There are good business reasons for offering a good benefits program."

This article was originally published in the February 1997 print edition of Entrepreneur with the headline: Mutual Benefits.