Nearly 78% of employees say that they would be more likely to stay in their current role if they had better benefits. Clearly, benefit packages have a huge effect on employee retention and productivity. Specifically, voluntary benefits — those paid for in full or in part by the employees themselves — have become one of the most critical aspects to benefit packages.

So let's take a look at exactly what benefits are most important to employees and how offering these benefits will affect the wellbeing of your workforce.

The power of HR

Before diving into the nitty gritty of what benefit packages you should consider implementing, let's discuss the role of human resources in this conversation and how to know when it's time to make some changes.

Changing benefit plans, better treatment of employees, and educating your workforce all comes down to your HR department. HR is the face of your company to your employees, it holds a lot of power when it comes to enacting positive changes at your company.

Before agreeing to make any changes to your benefit plans, ask yourself these questions regarding the policy in question:

• Will this policy empower and protect my employees?
• Does this policy adhere to the legal requirements of an employer?
• Will this policy minimize risk to employees and the workplace?
• Does this policy reflect the purpose and values of my company?

If you answered yes to all of those questions, then it's definitely worth your time and money to make the change. If your company has high turnover, regular complaints regarding workplace culture, or a spate of employees attempting to renegotiate their contracts, then it may be time to reexamine some of your policies and benefit packages.

An overlooked benefit

When you typically think of a benefits package, you think of health insurance, dental, vision, retirement plan, and vacation days. Maybe a gym membership or an on-site cafeteria. Life insurance is frequently left out of the conversation as there are some common misconceptions about offering it as a benefit.

Life insurance plans put people's minds at ease: if something unfortunate were to happen, their loved ones and dependents would be taken care of. As an employer, it benefits you that your employees feel valued and cared for, especially in a worst-case scenario. Because life insurance mainly affects the loved ones of your employee, offering life insurance goes a long way in developing trust between employer and employee, as it shows you care not just about your employee's wellbeing, but their family's security as well.

Another issue is that employers and benefit brokers rarely reevaluate their existing life insurance plans. If you want to offer life insurance to employers, the first step is forming partnerships with new insurance providers, which most benefit brokers already do. In fact, these partnerships span decades and are rarely reexamined. Most of these long-standing partnerships are offering the same, standard group life insurance package that doesn't adapt to the individual's needs.

Offering life insurance to employees is more complicated than simply giving them an employer-paid, one-size-fits-all option, and providers will often be able to offer employees flexible options depending on their individual requirements such as an instant decision life insurance. Let's take a closer look at this.

What needs to change

Only around half of Americans have a life insurance policy. Not only do not enough employers offer life insurance, the ones who do don't offer an adequate plan that fulfills the main purpose of a life insurance policy. Of the citizens who are policy holders, about 30 million of them have a plan that wouldn't provide sufficient funds for their family if something were to happen, rendering this "benefit" useless.

A common way for employers to add life insurance to their benefit plans is by offering a group life insurance policy, rather than an individualized plan. What's more, most policies are owned by the employer, which means employees can't bring their life insurance with them if they leave the company, a fact that many employees are sadly unaware of.

Group policies are typically low-risk for the insurers, low-cost for the employer, and low-payout for the employees. Average group coverage payouts are around one to two times the employee's annual income. This is not nearly enough to keep a family afloat if something were to happen to the main provider of the family.

A better option would be for employers to forge partnerships with insurance providers to offer flexible, voluntary, individual policies that are able to be personalized to the needs of the individual employee. An example of this type of plan would be instant decision life insurance where the plan is purchased online by the individual, and doesn't require a medical examination. Instant decision life insurance is much easier to acquire since you can purchase the plan within minutes of receiving a quote.

Many people, employers included, hold the misconception that life insurance is expensive and the process of obtaining coverage is complicated. But most people in good health will have a very low premium and the approval process is usually fairly straightforward.

Related: Workplace life insurance and the lifecycle of needs

The bottom line

Life insurance is often overlooked by employers and those who do offer life insurance rarely reevaluate their plans. Life insurance is not typically seen as a valuable benefit, but the statistics prove otherwise. Out of the 60% of private sector employees who offer group life insurance, almost all employees enroll in the policy. What's more, it's an extremely valuable benefit to your employees and it is an easy way to stand out from the crowd on how you are bettering your workers' experience at your company.

Bob Gaydos, CEO de Founder of Pendella, a tech company that exists to make the financial protection of individual life and disability insurance available to all people.