A Guide to Employee perks and Benefits
Offering staff perks or incentives is a way of attracting and retailing talent. Career site, Glassdoor, say that 57 % of job seekers rate perks and staff benefits as one of the top factors they consider when deciding whether to accept a job offer.
But what company perks really matter to employees? There are numerous employee perks that can be offered to staff, depending on the budget, size and flexibility of the business. Here are a few suggestions you could implement within your organisation.
Most company perks will inevitably have a financial cost. However, perks such as casual dress days, running clubs or entering in to discounts with local businesses to offer discounts to staff are some simple and easy ideas you can introduce.
Other initiatives include free food and drinks, whether healthy fruit or unhealthy treats, this can be a great idea to keep staff motivated. This can be implemented once a week or month to give them something to look forward to whether it be a breakfast club, or a lunch spread for the team.
Employers can also offer perks that will help achieve a better work/life balance for their employees. For example, you could offer employees flexi-hours in which employees can choose when they take their lunch hour, if they start earlier they can have an earlier finish, allowing them a little more choice of how they split their working hours across the week.
Paid sick days, increasing holiday allowance or wellness and health perks, such as a company exercise class or reduced gym memberships can help with a better work/life balance.
Incentives
Small business or start ups might not have the budget to implement staff perks straight away, so incentives could be a good way to keep your staff motivated and remain cost affective. Incentives can take place on a monthly or quarterly basis and can be rolled out as something that will take place if team or company targets are hit.
Incentives are a great way of increasing productivity and meeting targets, whilst rewarding staff for their hard work.
How to Introduce these changes?
To ensure full transparency about the company perks or benefits on offer, employers can consider introducing a policy on this. The benefit of having a policy is that they set out the schemes in place and are available in a central location for all employees to read and understand.
Having a hand-out or brochure containing employee perks can also be used as a way of attracting staff during your hiring stages or the introduction process for new starters. Including current benefits within job advertisements will, again, attract staff to apply to the business.