The perks your company offers can make or break an employee’s experience and
play a huge role in retention. In fact, four in five employees want perks or
benefits more than a pay raise, according to the Glassdoor Employment
Confidence Survey.
Since your employees’ work-life balance and satisfaction are impacted by the
type of perks you offer, it’s not something to overlook—especially in today’s
business climate where companies are struggling to find workers despite
global economic uncertainty.
Now is as good a time as ever to evaluate your company handbook to see where
you can upgrade your employee perks. It all starts with putting the “human”
back in human resources.
What is a work perk?
First, it’s important to understand what a perk isn’t—a perk isn’t a benefit.
Benefits are things like health coverage, paid time off or sick leave—and in
many countries, they’re mandated. Perks are non-wage offerings determined by
employers to be given to employees. A perk should be something that makes
employees feel valued and improves their work-life balance.
Perks can generally be categorized into four buckets:
- Convenience
- Career-related
- Personal/home-life
- Community and contribution
Understanding what perks are and categorizing them helps you be more thorough
and thoughtful about the types of perks you offer. It can be easy to get
caught up in popular, inexpensive, impersonalized perks—think office ping-pong
tables or kegerators—but those often don’t have the lasting impact that
thoughtful, personalized perks have on employees.
Beyond thinking through how perks fall within each category, it’s helpful to
keep in mind their purpose and impact on employees, as well as the cost to the
organization as a whole.
Impact and need
Start by surveying your employees. What kinds of perks would they value?
Whether it’s in line with what you're thinking—or entirely different—it’s
important not to make assumptions. You won’t know until you ask. Understanding
what your employees' value will help you offer more personalized perks.
A great example of listening to employees is the company Klowt. Founder Amelia
Sordell realized her employees weren’t utilizing their benefits and perks:
unlimited holiday, unlimited books from Amazon and unlimited learning.
Instead, she introduced 30 days’ paid holiday, £100 toward monthly commuting
costs, £45 toward monthly well-being costs, and £10 toward monthly home Wi-Fi
bills because that’s what the employees wanted.
Cost
It's also useful to create a perk budget—how much can your organization spend
to support perks? While it can be hard to put a number on employee
satisfaction and work-life balance, remember that offering perks will lead to
cost savings for your company and numerous benefits—increased employee
productivity and retention to name a few.
At the end of the day, engaged and satisfied employees make it a point to show
up to work and do more work. According to Gallup’s employee engagement
survey , “Highly engaged business units realize an 81% difference in absenteeism and a 14% difference in productivity."
How could these numbers affect your business for the better? What are some
perks your multinational business can offer to increase employee engagement?
Best work perks? Here are some examples
As you begin to evaluate specific perks, it’s more beneficial to spell out
specific perks that could fall into each of the four categories: Convenience,
career-related, personal/home-life, and community and contribution.
1. Convenience
These types of perks save employees time and add a level of comfort to their
lives. For in-office employees, this could be:
- Coffee and catered lunches
- Snacks (unhealthy and healthier options)
- Bringing in personal well-being services, such as manicurists, massage therapists or hairdressers (sometimes this is still paid for by the employee but saves them time)
- Paid parking near the office covered
For employees who work remotely, this is a convenience perk in and of itself.
It saves employees time and money spent commuting. But other convenience perks
for remote workers could include food delivery gift cards, laundry or dry-
cleaning pick-up, or a home office stipend.
2. Career-related
These perks involve continuing education and career development and can
include:
- Tuition stipends
- Paid online training
- Conferences and seminars
- Professional organizations
- Book programs (in-office library or store credits)
- Mentorship programs
Career-related perks help keep employees engaged and motivated. According to
LinkedIn’s 2018 Workplace Learning Report, 94% of employees surveyed said they would stay at a job longer if they were offered pathways for career development. Further proving that this kind of work perk is highly valued by workers.
3. Personal/home-life
These are perks your employees can utilize outside of the office. They can
provide a better work-life experience and overall job satisfaction for your
employees. Work-life balance is always top of mind for current employees and
potential ones—in fact, 83% of millennials consider work-life balance to be the most important factor in evaluating a potential job.
Related: Work-life balance, evolved
The increased job satisfaction and feeling of value that comes from
personalized perks only increase retention and productivity, as an engaged and
happy employee is incredibly more productive.
Some perks in this category include:
- Gym stipends or gym memberships
- Lifestyle spending accounts (LSAs) which give employees a set amount to spend each month on things like gym memberships, books, etc. This is a more personalized approach as some employees may not value exercise, for example, and can utilize these funds elsewhere. The company can decide on categories in which these funds can go to
- Mental health and wellness benefits
- Summer Fridays, when employees are encouraged to end work early on Fridays during the summer, or even take occasional Fridays off
- Mental health days, in which the entire workforce takes days off to refresh. For example, LinkedIn and Hootsuite are along some of the bigger names who have randomly offered their employees an entire week off to focus on mental health and improve morale
- Pregnancy loss leave for families—if it’s not already a required law in said country. With 1 in 4 pregnancies ending in miscarriage, this shouldn’t be overlooked. Your employees will feel valued and have time to recoup and refresh before returning back to work—and giving partners time off allows them to also offer support and mourn.
- Paid sabbaticals or travel stipends after serving the company for a certain amount of time. For example, Airbnb provides employees $2,000 a year for a travel allowance.
- Unlimited or flexible PTO that’s truly supported by the company culture
4. Community and contribution
Employees want to feel like they’re a part of a team working toward a common
goal. Outside of work, this could include contributing to different
organizations or participating in team-building and bonding activities.
Examples of specific perks include:
- Company-sponsored sports league
- In-office yoga
- Happy hours
- Volunteering opportunities or time off for volunteering at charitable causes
However, the best work perks can vary by location
For companies with an international workforce, it’s important to remember that
perks might not translate across the globe. What someone values and needs in
London, for example, might not be the same as someone in China. For example,
higher-income countries such as France and Germany enjoy shorter workweeks than middle-income or even developing countries.
This is why it’s so important to survey your global workforce and check in to
see what they value and need. Offering personalized perks based on geographic
location will play a huge role in helping you retain your top talent and
attract new, top talent because it’s in line with what they value in said
country.
Build a perks program that reinforces your company’s culture
Some companies follow what’s trendy when it comes to the types of perks they
offer—e.g., everyone is offering cold brew on tap, so we should, too; or
everyone is offering unlimited PTO, so why don’t we?
But building your company’s perks program—or shaking it up—should be
thoughtful and intentional. Your company perks also shouldn’t be a “set and
forget it” type of policy. The pandemic is a perfect example of this, as
employees began to think about what mattered most, and sought out companies
that offered the perks they valued.
The 2022 Microsoft Work Trend Index, which examined why frontline workers have
recently been leaving their jobs in record numbers uncovered that what people
want from work and what they’re willing to give in return has fundamentally
changed—and Microsoft calls this The Employee Worth It Equation.
“This study shows that 47% of respondents say they are more likely to put
family and personal life over work than they were before the pandemic. In
addition, 53%—particularly parents (55%) and women (56%)—say they’re more
likely to prioritize their health and wellbeing over work than before the
pandemic,” according to Forbes. Frontline workers are just some of many workers closing the door on outdated business ideals and instead looking ahead in hopes of finding companies that align with their values and prioritize their health and wellbeing.
At the end of the day, your perks program should reinforce your company’s
values and purpose. If one of your company’s values is learning, then ensure
you offer perks that align with it. Or maybe you value family—well, what perks
are you offering to reinforce work-life balance and family culture?
At Safeguard Global, for example, our vision is to transform the way people
work around the world . To further promote this, we’ve adopted a people-
centric and flexible approach to hiring that we refer to as Work in Any Way
. This involves giving our
employees the flexibility to work in a way that is most productive for them
and their team as a whole.
This perk allows our employees to feel empowered, trusted and valued by us
while also widening our talent pool—we can hire people beyond borders because
they aren’t bound to offices or the typical 9-5. This approach also allows us
to attract and retain top talent. It informs the decisions we make to improve
our employee’s work-life balance and overall job satisfaction.
Want to learn more about how we can help you implement a flexible hiring and
perks approach? Learn more about Work in Any Way or contact us today
.
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