A 60-person industrial-software company headquartered in İzmir has approval for 14 hires next year: six in Türkiye, five engineers for a new hub in Warsaw and three salespeople in London. The CFO wants one benefits policy, “the same for everyone, so nobody feels short-changed”. The HR lead knows that would not work. Polish engineers ask about the medical package and the sports card in the first call. London account executives want to know the pension match and whether private medical is included. Turkish candidates ask whether the health insurance covers their children and how much goes on the meal card.
The budget is fixed and the hiring plan is already late. What the company needs is not a bigger budget but a way to decide: whom it is hiring, what the law already provides in each country, what the market expects, what it can afford, which benefits are tax-efficient where, and how it will know in a year whether any of it worked.
A benefits package that attracts the right person is designed, not bought from a catalogue. This guide gives you the decisions in the order to make them, as four question sets with 40 questions in total, followed by a worked example for a 60-person company hiring in Türkiye, Poland and the UK.
Design in order: people → legal floor and market → budget and tax → design, story and measurement.
Keep statutory on-costs and discretionary benefits as two separate numbers, and set the discretionary budget per head, per country.
For multi-country teams, set one global principle and deliver it through local menus. Aim for equal value, not identical items.
Say what the benefits are in the job ad and the offer, and measure offer acceptance, take-up and first-year retention from day one.
Start with the people you want, not the benefits catalogue
Most packages are built backwards. Someone collects quotes for health insurance, a gym network and a meal card, then works out who might use them. Start instead with the people in your hiring plan. Twenty-six-year-old engineers in Warsaw, forty-year-old sales leaders in London and mid-career finance staff in İzmir value different things, and their life stage predicts it better than their job title. Young hires care about flexibility, learning and cash-like benefits. Parents care about family health cover and leave. Senior hires care about retirement saving and protection.
Look at your current workforce as well as the hiring plan. If you already know which benefits people use and which they ignore, you start with evidence rather than opinion. The role scorecard tells you what the job needs, and these ten questions tell you what the people who can do it need.
● Set 1 · Who you are hiring · 10 questions
1Which roles, levels and countries are in the hiring plan for the next 12–18 months?Benefits are priced per country and per level. A plan without this list cannot be costed.
2What life stages do the target candidates typically fall into?Early-career, parents and pre-retirement candidates rank health, leave and pensions very differently.
3How many will have dependants who need health cover?Dependant cover is often the largest single cost and the strongest pull.
4Are the roles office-based, hybrid, remote or shift-based?This decides whether meals, commuting support or home-office allowances make sense.
5Which talent pools are hardest to win, and what do those candidates say they lack?Spend the differentiator budget where competition is fiercest, not evenly.
6Why have candidates declined our offers in the past year?Decline reasons are the cheapest benefits research you have.
7Which current benefits do employees use, and which do they ignore?Low take-up can mean poor design or poor communication. Find out which.
8Do we hire internationally mobile people who expect a portable package?Expatriate and regional roles may need international health cover or relocation support.
9What does our employer brand promise about how we treat people?The package should prove the promise. Flexibility claims need flexible benefits.
10Who inside the company owns benefits decisions: HR, finance or the founders?Packages stall when ownership is unclear. Name one owner and one approver.
Map the legal floor and the market before adding anything
In every country, the law already provides part of the package: social insurance, pension or provident-fund contributions, leave and, in some countries, extra salary months, meal benefits or health insurance. You pay for it whether you mention it or not. Map it first, price it as employment cost, and do not present it as generosity. In Türkiye, severance (kıdem) builds up with tenure. Poland auto-enrols staff into the PPK employee capital plan with an employer contribution. The UK requires auto-enrolment and, since April 2026, statutory sick pay from the first day of absence.
Then benchmark the expected layer against the employers you actually compete with for each role, not against national averages. Look at competitors’ job ads, ask recruiters, review recent declined offers and, if the budget allows, buy a survey cut for your sector. The Europe and Türkiye benefits guide and the salary benchmarking guide show where to look. If you hire through an employer of record, check what it includes by default; the guide to hiring without an entity explains the options.
● Set 2 · What the law already gives, and what the market expects · 10 questions
1What does statute require in each country: social insurance, pension, leave, extra pay, health or meals?This is the floor. Price it before you design anything else.
2Does a collective agreement or sector scheme apply to these roles?Agreements can add a 13th month, health funds or meal benefits on top of the law.
3Which statutory payments build up with tenure, such as severance or gratuity?Candidates who give up accrued severance by resigning may need a reason to move.
4What do the two or three employers we compete with offer for this role?Real rivals set the bar, not a national survey average.
5Which benefits would candidates treat as missing if we left them out?That is the expected layer. Gaps here lose offers before differentiators count.
6How good is public health care for this group, and what top-up do they expect?Strong public systems make private cover a minor extra. Weak ones make it the main event.
7Do any benefits require a local entity, policyholder or registered scheme?Group health and pension plans often cannot be bought from abroad.
8If we use an EOR, which benefits are bundled and which can we add?Avoid paying twice or promising what the EOR cannot deliver.
9What are candidates in this market comparing: annual total, monthly net or basic plus allowances?Present the package in the format they use, or it will look smaller than it is.
10Which rule changes are due in the next 18 months?Planned changes, such as the UK’s 2029 salary-sacrifice cap, should shape today’s design.
Put a number on it: budget per head and tax efficiency
Finance teams usually ask for one benefits number. Give them two. The first is statutory on-costs, which you cannot change and which vary widely: in the UK, employer National Insurance has been 15% of earnings above a low threshold since April 2025; in Poland, employer social contributions are around a fifth of gross pay; in Türkiye, employer social security is roughly a fifth of gross pay or more, depending on the incentives you qualify for. The second is the discretionary benefits budget, which you set. Express it per head and per country, and also as a percentage of base payroll, so it can be compared over time.
Then build in cost growth. Aon projects an average 9.8% rise in employer medical-plan costs worldwide for 2026 and 8.2% in Europe (Aon), so a health plan that fits the budget today may not fit it at renewal. Tax rules decide how much value each unit of budget delivers. In Türkiye the 2026 meal exemption is 300 TL per working day plus VAT (PwC Türkiye). In the UK, salary-sacrificed pension contributions save National Insurance, although from April 2029 only on the first £2,000 a year, while private medical insurance is a taxable benefit. In Poland, most medical and sports packages are taxable benefits in kind unless social-fund rules apply. The same spend can be worth far more to the employee in one country than in another.
● Set 3 · Budget and tax efficiency · 10 questions
1What are statutory employer on-costs per head in each country?Keep this separate so it does not absorb the discretionary budget unnoticed.
2What discretionary benefits budget per head will we set in each country?A per-head figure makes trade-offs visible and comparable.
3What is that as a percentage of base payroll, and how will it move with headcount?Finance plans in percentages. Agree the method once.
4Which benefits are tax-free or low-tax in each country, and up to what 2026 limit?Use the efficient channels first: meal cards, pension contributions, exempt allowances.
5Which benefits create a taxable benefit in kind for the employee?A benefit that costs the employee tax is worth less than its price.
6How fast is each cost expected to rise, and who absorbs the increase?Agree in advance on employee contributions, plan changes or absorbing the cost.
7Do we need to hedge currency or inflation in any market?In high-inflation markets, fixed-amount benefits lose value within the year.
8Are any benefits cheaper bought regionally or globally than locally?Pooled or multinational contracts can help, but check that local cover is good enough.
9Would cash be cheaper than a benefit, once tax and social charges are counted?Sometimes yes, but cash can become salary and raise severance and contribution bases.
10What is the cost of not acting: one lost hire, one early leaver, one long vacancy?Compare benefit costs with the cost of a vacancy, not just with last year’s budget.
Choice or consistency: one policy across several countries
Multi-country teams make fairness feel complicated, and it does not need to be. Identical items are neither possible nor fair, because the law and the tax system already treat employees differently in each country. What you can make consistent is the principle and the value. A principle such as “health cover with a family option, a retirement top-up above the law, a learning budget and flexible hours” becomes family health insurance in İzmir, a medical package in Warsaw and private medical plus a pension uplift in London. Value can be checked by comparing the employer’s spend per head with local pay levels, rather than converting everything into one currency.
Choice is the other dial. Workmonitor 2025 found that 56% of workers would trust their employer more if it offered personalised benefits, so let people choose within a fixed budget where it is easy to run, for example through cafeteria points in Poland or salary-sacrifice options in the UK. Keep the core (health, protection, retirement) fixed and the edges flexible. The guide to flexible benefits and cafeteria plans explains the mechanics, and the flexible benefits platforms comparison lists the tools.
Tell the story early: job ads, offers and total reward statements
A package that candidates do not see does not attract anyone. Replace “competitive benefits” in the job ad with the three items that matter most in that market: the family health plan in Türkiye, the medical package and sports card in Poland, the pension percentage and parental leave in the UK. Put the full list, with values where you can, in the written offer. Once a year, send every employee a total reward statement showing pay, statutory contributions and benefits, because statutory contributions and benefit costs never show up on a payslip.
Pay transparency makes this more urgent. In the EU, the Pay Transparency Directive, whose transposition deadline was 7 June 2026, gives applicants the right to pay information before employment and defines pay to include benefits in kind. Our guide to the EU directive after the deadline covers the obligations. Agree the benefits story together with the pay range, using the pay band question set, so the ad, the interview and the offer say the same thing. The guide to making the offer covers the conversation itself.
Measure what the package actually does
Benefits are rarely measured, so they are rarely improved. Decide on a small scoreboard before launch: offer-acceptance rate and the reasons for declines, take-up by benefit and by country, first-year retention, benefits cost per head against budget, and, at renewal, health-plan claims and utilisation. Review it every six months and change one thing at a time. The recruitment metrics guide shows how to fit these numbers into your hiring dashboard.
● Set 4 · Design, communication and measurement · 10 questions
1What is our one-sentence global benefits principle?It keeps local decisions consistent and makes fairness explainable.
2Which items are fixed core and which are open to employee choice?Fixed health and protection, flexible edges: easy to run and still personal.
3Which one or two differentiators will we fund in each country?Concentrated spend is noticed. Spreading it thinly is not.
4Which three benefits will the job ad name in each market?Specific items beat “competitive benefits” and filter for the right candidates.
5How will the offer letter present benefits and their value?Candidates compare offers line by line. Make yours easy to compare.
6Will we send an annual total reward statement?It turns invisible spend into perceived value.
7What offer-acceptance rate are we aiming for, and how will we log decline reasons?Without reasons, a low acceptance rate cannot be fixed.
8What take-up rate would tell us a benefit is working?Low take-up means poor fit or poor communication. Either way, act.
9How will we track first-year retention by country and team?Early attrition shows a mismatch between what was promised and what was experienced.
10When will we review the package, and who decides on changes?A fixed review date stops benefits drifting for years unexamined.
Worked example: a 60-person company hiring in Türkiye, Poland and the UK
Back to the İzmir software company. After working through the four sets, it adopts one principle (health cover with a family option, a retirement top-up above the law, a learning budget and flexible hours) and delivers it through three local packages. The table shows the design. It shows choices, not prices, because prices depend on group size, claims history and provider; get quotes through the group health insurance, workplace pension, meal and benefit card and wellbeing platform guides.
Pension 5% via sacrificePrivate medicalLife assurance
Differentiator funded
Mid-year pay reviewEmployer BES top-up
Cafeteria points
Enhanced parental leaveEV salary sacrifice
Tax point to check
Meal exemption 300 TL/day + VAT (2026); limits on exempt health and pension premiums
Medical and sports packages usually taxable in kind; check social-fund options
Sacrifice NI saving capped at £2,000 from April 2029; private medical is taxable
First money goes to
Family health plan
Medical package with family option
Pension uplift
Named in the job ad
Family health cover, meal card, hybrid days
Medical package, sports card, learning budget
Pension %, private medical, parental leave
Measured at 12 months
Offer acceptance, first-year retention
Medical take-up, points usage
Offer acceptance, pension opt-outs
Illustrative design for a fictional 60-person company. Statutory items simplified; confirm with local payroll and advisers.
The worked example as three layer stacks: the same principle sits on three different legal floors and market norms.
Two decisions make this design work. First, the company did not try to equalise items. It equalised the principle and checked that spend per head was in proportion to local pay. Second, it put money where each market notices it: health for families in Türkiye, the medical package in Poland and the pension in the UK. A year later it can see whether the offer-acceptance rate improved in each country and adjust. The country map shows how the same logic applies in 25 markets.
Consultant’s noteIn high-inflation markets, protect the value of fixed-amount benefits. A meal card or allowance set in lira in January buys noticeably less by autumn. Tie them to the annual exemption limit or review them at the mid-year pay round, and say so in the offer. That one line reassures candidates more than an extra perk would.
Watch outPromising a benefit you cannot deliver in a country is worse than not offering it. Group health and pension plans often need a local policyholder, and an employer of record may only offer its standard bundle. Before you name a benefit in a job ad, confirm that you, your EOR or your broker can provide it from the start date, and get the quote in writing.
Your next move
Write down the hiring plan by role, level and country for the next 12–18 months.
Work through Set 1 with the hiring managers and Set 2 with local payroll or your EOR.
Agree two budget numbers with finance, statutory on-costs and discretionary benefits per head, for each country.
Draft a one-sentence benefits principle and a local menu for each country, with one or two funded differentiators.
Rewrite job-ad templates to name three market-relevant benefits instead of “competitive benefits”.
Set up the scoreboard (offer acceptance, decline reasons, take-up, first-year retention) and book the six-month review.
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Last Updated: November 2026 · Reviewed by the Kurums HR editorial team. This guide is general information, not legal advice; employment and advertising rules change, so confirm requirements with local counsel before you post.
