Even if you pay the cost, you can still structure a plan so that the lion's share goes to you and your family. Retirement benefits can be cost-effective compensation Tax leveraging lets you deliver more to your employees than you are paying them. A retirement plan can do that for you. Most larger businesses have retirement plans and it's not because they are kinder to their employees than you are. It's because they make financial sense in several ways.
Some plans make contributions the contingent on the profits of the business.
This means allows you to increase contributions in good years and skip them in bad years. This gives your employees a stake in your bottom line. That's what tax leverage does. It's more cost effective than the dollars you spend on salaries. A thousand dollars put into an employee's retirement account is worth considerably more than the same money paid out in cash.