While every employee is happy to have a salary increase, there are several other ways to reward workers besides offering more money. Read on to discover our list of the ten best employee perks and incentives to boost employee morale and reduce employee turnover in your workforce!
Key points
All the best companies know that people are their most valuable assets. Employee satisfaction is vital to a company’s success.
Do you want to run a successful company? If so, it’s important to establish a positive company culture and offer job perks and initiatives that excite and inspire staff and attract top talent to the recruiting process.
Company perks are a major opportunity for most companies that aren’t taking full advantage of the appeal of non-monetary benefits for most employees.
Did you know that 48% of employees would weigh employee benefits, incentives, and work perks in their decision to find their next job? This is also true when working with temporary workers since perks will likely determine if they stay after the assignment.
Offering your employees a benefits package that includes a subscription to Headway, childcare, gift cards, lunches, mental health support, free exercise classes, and a flexible remote work schedule are a few innovative and great options to keep your employees happy!
Benefits vs. Perks
Before diving into this topic, let’s consider the difference between perks and benefits. What you offer your team says a lot about the employee experience you want to promote and the company culture you want to cultivate. Look outside the box and provide employee perks and benefits that reflect your company’s values and company culture.
Employees expect certain benefits, like health care, parental leave, or time off. At the same time, perks are an opportunity to set your company apart with thoughtful offerings, like on-site fitness classes, retirement plans, or a pet-friendly office. Your employee perks can decide whether a promising candidate will work at your company.
According to SHRM (The Society for Human Resource Management), businesses offering employee benefits packages that include things like life insurance, PTO, healthcare, tuition reimbursement, and wellness programs are better equipped to succeed in today’s competitive market.
But what company perks at work are significant to employees? If it’s not salaries that always move the needle, what does? The answers might surprise you.
1. Subscription to Headway
Headway is an online platform that provides bite-sized, personalized summaries of the world’s most popular business, self-help, and personal growth books. Headway’s corporate subscription is a solution for your team or organization that helps to empower your employees and boost their knowledge. This app is a great work perk if you want something that unites and educates your team.
Through Headway’s corporate subscription, you will get Premium access to the Headway app with insights from over 1500 best non-fiction books in audio, text, and gamified format. Headway’s exclusive business subscription further creates a personalized book collection for your company based on your team’s interests and company culture. It also offers daily insights, motivational widgets, self-growth challenges, progress tracking, and more.
If you think your team could benefit from this employee perk, find out about the Headway app for business today!
2. A pet-friendly environment
As organizations search for ways to attract and retain employees, offering pet-friendly perks is an effective tool to boost recruitment, increase employee morale, and encourage healthy habits.
Interaction with animals is a proactive way to improve workers’ physical and mental health. Animals encourage people to be more social and active. These healthy habits have been found to help lower obesity and reduce money spent on medical care. If your office can’t have pets on-site, alternative pet-friendly work perks are free training classes, pet daycare, pet insurance, and discounted vet services.
3. Home office budget
With work-from-home and flexible work schedules becoming more permanent, employees want a home office space that works comfortably for them. Setting up a home office can leave your employees out of pocket. A company can help its team members create the ideal workspace by offering a home office budget as a work perk. That means you can also provide the accessories they need to stay productive.
Try setting up a spending account with a limit and customizing which suppliers they can purchase from — or leave it open-ended so they can personalize their space however it works best for them. This employee perk will help your team members create a productive and comfortable home office space with a reasonable work-life balance.
4. Massages
In every business, staff productivity and employee engagement are essential. To perform well and be productive at work, the staff must keep their energy levels, mental alertness, and motivation high throughout the day. On the other hand, due to the working environment, work options, and demands of modern-day work, office workers often experience physical tension in the neck, shoulders, and back, repetitive strain injuries in wrists and hands, stress, anxiety, and headaches.
Offering on-site massage services is a great employee perk to offset this stress. Office massage is an extremely cost-effective way of alleviating physical and mental tension and boosting morale in the workplace. Extremely popular with employees, it makes them feel relaxed, invigorated, mentally focused, and ready to work at their best!
5. Lunch stipend or team lunches
Free food is a perk that everyone can get behind! The simple act of taking a break from work and eating lunch together can go a long way in building stronger teams. It goes beyond just eating together — it’s the notion of putting aside time during a busy work day to exhale with your team.
Many new companies are investing in providing lunch for their employees, and it’s often tax-deductible! Before the pandemic, it was easier for companies to go out to restaurants or provide team lunches. If your company has gone remote or follows a hybrid model, you could offer a lunch stipend for food delivery to their home. Offering a weekly meal for your company members is a great employee perk to bring your team together and boost employee satisfaction.
6. Daily wellness options
Providing daily wellness programs and options helps employees stay energized and focused throughout their workday. Try offering free tea, coffee, snacks, and water if possible.
Another great wellness employee perk is to have relaxation spaces. Giving your employees a safe space to relax and unwind during their breaks helps them refresh and re-energize. These little work perks can go a long way in improving employee well-being, productivity, and happiness.
7. Mental health clinical services
Mental health benefits can relate to a more comprehensive health insurance plan that includes consultations, counseling, or therapy. It can also be an Employee Assistance Program (EAP), a more general service to help employees solve problems — whether those problems are related to finances, stress, or other non-work conflicts. In addition, many top-tier EAPs offer mental health services, usually through in-person, telephone, or video counseling.
Whether you implement one or both of these solutions, mental health benefits offer extra support to employees whenever they require it. This employee perk also provides significant returns for businesses. Mental health services improve employees’ overall health, prevent burnout, and increase productivity and employee retention. Providing mental health clinical services and preventative care, such as therapy, coaching, and mentorship, is important in supporting your employees’ mental health and improving your work environment.
8. Giving back
Many studies have shown that American workers, especially millennials, value employers that emphasize doing well globally. Companies like tech giant Google do a great job at this. Google is known for leading big-name companies with the best employee benefits by matching employees’ charitable donations and donating money to a nonprofits for five hours of volunteer time.
Consistent acts of service will further catch the attention of like-minded people in the business world with whom you may not have had the chance to connect otherwise. Creating relationships with others who give to similar causes will double your charitable efforts and give your company access to an array of new professional contacts. Philanthropy aligns your company with a greater cause, opens the doors to many networking opportunities, and reveals professional development opportunities for your employees.
This great employee perk unites your team while doing something for the greater good.
9. Free exercise classes
Sitting for too long at work brings a host of negative long-term health effects. As an employer, the effect of the in-office desk-bound demands placed on workers includes increased healthcare costs, lower job satisfaction, more sick leave requests, and a less productive workforce. A great employee perk and way to offset this issue is to offer full or employee discounts for gym memberships.
If you don’t have space or money to invest in an on-site gym, there are several creative ways to introduce physical activity into a workplace.
Running group fitness classes at a nearby park or bringing in a trainer or yoga instructor once a week can provide a much-needed energy boost to employees. Even something as simple as encouraging a daily walking meeting can have a big impact.
Integrating voluntary exercise during work hours indicates to employees that their company cares about their health and well-being. From a monetary perspective, this strategy will pay off in the long run by shaving healthcare costs and keeping employees healthy and productive.
10. Flexible schedule
Flexibility is a hugely desired perk for the modern-day employee trying to balance many personal and professional responsibilities, including education and familial duties.
Affording employees flexibility in their schedule shows that they are more than 9-5ers chained to a desk, but rather, trusted partners with a stable work-life balance.
Ultimately, a flexible work schedule leads to a greater quality of life. Employees feel like they don’t have to sacrifice their careers to focus on their continuing education or family – and vice versa. This contributes to more long-term value than a salary ever could.
The takeaway
Employee perks are an integral part of your employee experience. Developing the right package takes time and experimentation but comes with significant competitive advantages.
Remember that your employees’ desires and needs will change over time. As your business grows and your team members move into different stages of life, they may require different things from your company. You must survey your employees about their desired benefits and perks to stay ahead of the curve. Keep an eye out for new ways to surprise and reward your team.
Want to give your employees access to Headway’s corporate subscription and unite your team? Not sure which plan will fulfill all your needs? Check out our corporate plans to gain unlimited access to a library of over 1500+ book summaries!
FAQs
What are the top three most sought-after employee benefits?
This answer differs depending on the company and type of work. However, some of the most sought-after employee benefits include flexible work hours, healthcare cost reimbursements, mental health services, and four-day work weeks.
What do employees value most?
After two years of existential crises — the pandemic, a war in Europe, and historic inflation — employees are more focused on their financial security and well-being than climbing the ladder or career advancement, according to Mercer’s 2022 Inside Employees’ Minds study. Some of the best employee perks to keep your team happy and secure include daily wellness options, free exercise classes, and free mental health clinical services.
What are some unique employee perks?
Home office stipends, pet-friendly environments, and a learning and development budget are unique employee perks. The Headway app is a great example of a unique work perk if you want to bring your team together in an educational environment! Offering employees access to book summaries and self-growth challenges is an effective way to show your employees that you care about their development as people.
