When it comes to attracting "the best and the brightest"employees, it is incredibly difficult for small businesses tocompete with larger employers, in at least four ways: wages,benefits, perks, and recruiting programs.

Wages

When it comes to pay scale, most small business owners find italmost impossible to compete with most larger employers. Accordingto a Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) report, titled "December 2013Employer Costs for Employee Compensation," private industryemployers spent an average of $29.63 per hour worked for totalemployee compensation ($20.76 in wages and salaries, and $8.87 inbenefits). Small business employers with a large number of minimumwage jobs available certainly can't compete with these numbers.

And, for better or worse, pay scale is "front and center" thesedays with employees working in small businesses. LegalShieldcommissioned two surveys in 2014, one called "Small Business Survey2014," and the other called "Small Business Employee BenefitsAnalysis."

One point noted in the first survey was that 55 percent of smallbusiness employers found it difficult to hire good employees.

In the second survey, it was reported that 61.7% of smallbusiness employees ages 18 to 34 said they had looked for new jobslast year, and 44.7 percent reported that they will be looking fornew jobs in the coming year. And it's not only younger workerslooking to move on. It is also those who have more education,whether they be younger or older. The survey found that, while only40 percent of employees working in small business who had highschool or vocational degrees searched for new jobs last year, 54.3percent with bachelor's degrees did the same.

The number one reason these employees were looking for new jobs?Almost 50 percent (46%) said "better pay/salary," while in distantsecond place (13%) was "better opportunities and advancementpotential." And, when asked how small business employers couldimprove job satisfaction, the number one response (57%) was "betterpay, more raises, more money." The second place reasons chartedonly 14 percent.

"Small businesses typically cannot attract top-qualityemployees, because their pay scales are far below those in largecorporations," said Jerry Thomas, president and CEO of DecisionAnalyst, the firm that LegalShield hired to conduct these surveys."These percentages are not surprising in light of declining U.S.household incomes among the majority of the population. I don'tthink you could conclude from these numbers that money is the mostimportant aspect of their jobs. However, it is uppermost in theirminds right now because of economic distress."

Benefits

It is also equally difficult for small business employers tocompete with larger employers when it comes to offering benefits.Not only are smaller employers usually unable to offer as wide arange of benefits as larger employers, they are also usually unableto pay as much of the cost of the benefits as larger employers are,leaving employees to pay higher percentages of the premiums.

Perks

By nature, smaller businesses offer less opportunity foremployees to advance in their careers, since there are fewer levelsin the organization, and fewer employees in each level.

In addition, while many small employers try to attract newemployees, especially younger employees, by offering a moreflexible work environment, this often turns out to be a challenge.That is, many small businesses want to offer alternative programsthat emphasize "lifestyle flexibility," such as flexible hours,additional days off, and part-time employment. However, these canbe problematic, in that small businesses often aren't able to hireenough employees to cover for each other. For example, when largenumbers of young employees want weekends off, it can be difficultfor small businesses that are open weekends to find enoughemployees to cover these shifts, especially businesses that arelimited to offering minimum wage.

Recruiting Programs

Finally, while large employers often have large advertisingbudgets to attract new employees, in addition to well-staffed humanresources and recruiting departments that spend almost all of theirtime "in the field" recruiting potential applicants at job fairsand college career days, small employers do not enjoy theseluxuries. Often, their primary source of new applicants is "word ofmouth" from existing employees.