Employee Benefits and Perks Your Company Should Be Offering
Employee experience matters. We focus so much of our attention on business outcomes and customers that often our employee experience is lacking without us realizing it.
Which is a big problem. 😔
One way to create an excellent employee experience is to pay attention to the benefits and perks we give our employees. Are we providing the benefits and perks that matter to them?
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Providing benefits and perks that improve the quality of your employees’ lives is crucial for a positive employee experience, can help improve employee motivation, and can be a key competitive differentiator in a crowded space. Nearly every company offers benefits (and is often required to), but perks can make or break a promising candidate’s decision to work at your company.
“Companies that invest in employee experience are four times more profitable than those that don’t.”
–Blake Morgan, Forbes
What are employee benefits?
Here’s how we think about it:
Employees need benefits.
Employees want perks.
Employee benefits are are a type of non-wage compensation provided to employees by their employers. Benefits plans typically include several types of offerings, such as medical insurance, retirement plans, and paid time off. In today's day and age, benefits aren't a nice-to-have—they are essential to employees. Benefits are typically the most necessary and valuable to your employees and are likely to be more of a financial investment for your company.
The importance of employee benefits
Businesses must offer competitive benefits to attract talent for the jobs they post. Offering benefits on top of compensation demonstrates a company’s commitment to its employees’ well-being.
Categories of employee benefits
Employee benefits can be categorized into the following categories:
- Health Benefits: Medical expenses and wellness services
- Financial Benefits: Retirement plans and bonuses
- Work/Life Balance Benefits: Paid time off and flexible schedules
- Professional Development Benefits: Training and education
Your state may mandate that you offer certain services and benefits, like health insurance. However, if you want to compete with other businesses, you should also offer optional perks that enhance the employee experience.
Employee benefits best practices
If you want to stand out from other businesses, explore benefits that will give you the most bang for your buck. While you can’t take on too many expenses to offer your team perks, you must differentiate your company by promoting a culture of wellness and acting in the best interests of your employees. One example is choosing a health plan to offers an FSA that working parents can use toward childcare expenses.
Employee benefits vs. perks
Now that we defined employee benefits, let's look at the difference between benefits and perks. As we said earlier, benefits are what your employees need, while perks are what your employees want. Examples of perks include a flexible working schedule (remote, hybrid), a wellness stipend, a meal stipend, or dedicated time for in-person company gatherings.
As you’re deciding how to invest in your employees, you’ll likely want to focus on benefits first. On the other hand, perks tend to be less costly, but can still have an outsized impact on employee engagement and company culture.
Oftentimes, employees expect you to offer certain benefits—like healthcare or days off—while perks are an opportunity to set your company apart with unique, fun offerings—like virtual cooking classes or a pet-friendly office.
5 benefits you should invest in
The benefits and perks you offer your team say a lot about your company culture and the employee experience you want to promote. It's essential to look outside the box and provide employee benefits and perks that speak to your company’s values.
Let’s start with the five best company benefits that will help your employees feel appreciated and more focused at work.
1. Health insurance
If you’re based in the United States, navigating healthcare costs can be a nightmare. If you’re an uninsured American, you could be paying thousands of dollars for just a ride in an ambulance. Makes you want to seek help, doesn’t it? 🤦♀️
This financial burden can make it challenging for American workers to get the care they need. But according to Maslow’s Hierarchy Of Needs, our physical needs are essential. To do fantastic work and continue to grow, we need to be healthy, have food and water, and feel safe—pretty standard stuff!
If you want your employees to feel comfortable at work, they can't do so while struggling with their health—including their mental health.
Providing healthcare coverage for your employees if they don't have access to a plan can be a literal lifesaver. Plus, it’s required for companies with more than 50 employees!
If you live outside of the United States, you may not need to worry about healthcare coverage due to universal health coverage or some other form of healthcare, but it may still be worth it to look into how you can support your employees through preventative healthcare and wellness programs.
Consider the various types of health insurance you can offer your employees. Providing health, dental, vision insurance, or even health reimbursement arrangements (HRAs) will ensure your employees are covered and able to take care of a wide range of health problems.
2. Life insurance
Life insurance is another great benefit that secures an employee’s family’s future in unfortunate situations. If a family loses one source of income, they could end up in a dire financial position. Life insurance protects your employees' families in case something horrible happens.
Providing life insurance will give every employee and their family peace of mind. You should also educate your employees on the benefits of purchasing their own plans as well. Many employees are underprepared and underinsured when it comes to life insurance.
3. Paid time off—that actually gets taken
We need time away from work to recharge, but there’s an issue: employees aren’t using vacation time as much as they should be. The average U.S. employe gets 11 paid vacation days a year. Yet 28 million Americans don't get any paid time off. Paid time off can boost employee productivity when implemented effectively, giving your employees time to rediscover their love for your organization and battle burnout.
It's not enough to give paid time off—your employees need to feel comfortable taking it. How does your current company culture treat vacations? Are people proud of the time they spend traveling, or are they scared to request a day off? And when they’re on vacation, are they still responding to emails? Make it part of your culture to really unplug on vacations.
Offering paid sick days is also critical. Sick employees coming into the office because they don’t want to lose a day of income or don’t have enough vacation days doesn’t help your bottom line. The employees aren't as productive as they could be, and they’re spreading germs! 😷
4. Family leave
The arrival of a new family member is an exhilarating—and exhausting—time, and having to go back to work immediately can be challenging for your employees. Offering leave—for both parents—makes a massive difference in your employees’ personal lives and ensures that when they come back, they’re ready to be back and engaged with their work.
Even with a great leave policy, company culture needs to support it. With this bonus, a longtime Bonusly employee publicly recognized our CEO for taking his parental leave and living our company’s core values:
While the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) lets employees take unpaid leave for certain life events, your company can get ahead of the curve by offering paid parental leave. It’ll help you stand out as an employer and communicate that you fully support your employees’ personal lives! 🍼
5. 401(k) and retirement planning
As much as you don't want to see your employees leave, retirement is a part of the employee lifecycle. It's hard for anyone to retire when they don’t have enough saved for retirement.
Thoughtful employers make sure their employees are informed about retirement savings and help them by matching their contributions. According to Fidelity, the average 401(k) match is around 4.7%. Companies can also offer non-matching 401(k) contributions, ROTH IRAs, and partial 401(k) contributions Many people are underprepared for retirement, so giving your employees advice on retirement savings will help them be better prepared for life after your company.
--> Resilient, engaged teams have a competitive edge during uncertain times. Download the Free Guide: 3 Steps to Building Engaged, Resilient Teams
12 perks your employees will love
Next, let’s move on to the eight perks you can offer your employees in addition to your benefits. These perks are what can truly set your company apart from the rest and can incentive top talent to stay.
1. Student loan assistance
Student loan debt has reached over $1.7 trillion in the United States. Many of your employees are likely dealing with student loan debt. If your employees’ monthly payments are high, this is likely stopping them from giving you their best work due to stress, or even because they have to work multiple jobs to pay off their debt. Both public and private companies are beginning to offer student loan assistance as a perk to lift some of the weight off their loyal employees.
Many employees want student loan assistance, as much as they want 401(k) matching. By helping your employees pay off their student loan debt faster, they have more money to reinvest into their retirement savings. Offering both student loan assistance and 401(k) matching would be ideal to help your employees find their financial footing, and set them up for success in the future!
2. Flexible scheduling and remote work
While working in an office environment can be great for bringing your employees together face-to-face, many employees want flexible scheduling or work-from-home opportunities. You might find that many employees are much more productive on their own schedule, rather than the traditional 9-5!
This is something you can ease into. Giving employees the ability to work from home a few times a week—or even every workday—can help promote flexibility and demonstrate your trust in your employees. It may be time for you to put together a hybrid workplace strategy!
3. Career development
Your employees want to learn how to do their job more effectively—and they want to know they have advancement and career growth opportunities. Are you afraid of training your employees because they might leave with your training? This typically only happens when you train employees, but don’t give them a path for upward mobility in your company.
91% of Highly Engaged employees are satisfied with their professional development opportunities compared to only 28% of Actively Disengaged employees.
–Bonusly State of Employee Engagement
Professional development for employees, along with the ability to make more income and take on additional responsibility within the company, has a huge impact on employee experience. Large or small, offering continuing education or training opportunities like these can really make a difference:
- Paying for or keeping a library of professional development books
- Tuition reimbursement for continuing education
- Conference tickets
- Professional organization dues (For example, SHRM dues)
- Coaching or mentoring programs
- Sending newly promoted employees to trainings
- Engaging external speakers to host learning for your team or company
4. Childcare
If you want to amplify the parental leave benefit, you could also offer child care as a perk for working parents. Some companies provide childcare stipends or even create on-site daycare centers for their employees.
When your working parents spend less time stressing out about child care, they can focus on being engaged with their work.
5. Work/life balance
On average, American workers stay late 2.5 days a week, whether in their homes or company offices. Most of the time, workers stay late because they feel pressured to do so. While this time may add to some extra money in your pocket, it makes you lose out on personal time, sleep, and time to create healthy meals. Working late is an intense strain on work/life balance.
Creating a balance between work and life is the best way for your employees to come to work each day feeling refreshed. Try to keep an eye on employees who are continuously burning the midnight oil, instill out-of-office policies, and work with your employees to understand how you can create a healthier work/life balance for them.
Remember to encourage turning on that Do Not Disturb before and after working hours! 🚫
6. Lunch stipend or team lunch
This is a perk everyone loves! The simple act of eating lunch together can go a long way in building stronger teams. It’s more than just eating together—it’s the concept of putting aside time during a busy day to take a break with your colleagues.
Many companies are investing in providing lunch for their employees, and it’s often tax-deductible! That includes Bonusly! Before the pandemic, our company provided Wednesday team lunches, which were a big highlight. Now, every employee receives a lunch stipend for food delivery to their home.
Creating an experience around food is one of the easiest things a company can do to increase employee morale and overall company culture. –Christine Marcus, founder and CEO of Alchemista, a corporate catering service.
7. Wellness programs
Just as health insurance is an excellent employee benefit, you can increase the value of health insurance by investing in an employee wellness program. Wellness programs promote an active lifestyle and fill in the gaps not covered by health insurance. Your wellness program might include things like providing healthy snacks at work, subsidizing a gym membership, offering standing desks, and more.
Make sure that your employee wellness program is inclusive and can address the full spectrum of healthy lifestyles. Health and wellness look different for all employees, and your program should reflect that variety.
8. Employee recognition and reward programs
Last but not least, a fantastic perk is creating an employee recognition and reward program for your team. Your employees do great work every day, and they deserve to be recognized for it. Employee rewards can be as simple as saying thank you or providing branded swag, or you can reward your employees with things like basketball tickets, hotels, laptops, and more. Dedicated employee recognition programs can also make celebrating employee birthdays or work anniversaries a breeze.
If you are looking for an easy-to-implement system, Bonusly is a stellar recognition and rewards platform. Your employees are each given a monthly allowance they can spend on giving small bonuses to their team members. Your team can give recognition based on your company’s core values, and they also get a chance to write why they are giving the bonus, add GIFs, and personalize the bonus. Once your team members accumulate enough points, they can redeem them for a wide variety of donations and gift cards.
9. Home office stipend
Give your team money to cover things like a computer, desk chair, or second monitor. Consider offering a stipend to cover their internet bill and utility expenses, too. A small bonus can go a long way in making your team feel valued and appreciated.
10. Pet-friendly days
Any pet lover will tell you that a four-legged friend can brighten their day. With that in mind, consider allowing your team to bring their dog (or even cat!?) to work if you have an office. You can divide up days by pet type to avoid any workplace conflicts. For example, one month you could host dog days and then the next you could allow feline-inclined workers to bring in their cats.
11. Volunteer time off
Volunteering is a great way to support the community and unlock the intrinsic rewards of contributing to something bigger than yourself. Consider offering your team paid time off to volunteer to support a cause they believe in.
12. Employee discounts
Partner with local businesses and large chains to give your team discounts on goods and services. This perk can help your employees unwind and save some money while also supporting businesses in your community.
How to know if your benefits and perks are working
While benefits and perks look good on paper, it can be hard to understand whether your employees appreciate or even make use of them. For the highest ROI, always assess your employees’ needs before and after you start offering a new benefit or perk with a survey or by running the data. Here are a few questions to ask yourself and your employees:
- Do employees know that this benefit or perk exists?
- Are employees taking advantage of this benefit or perk long-term? (did employees use perks once and then never again, or is it a staple in their lives?)
- What do they think about the perk in general?
- Would they prefer a different benefit or perk over an existing one?
You must give company benefits and perks time to be adopted. Are you giving your benefits and perks a fair shot by making sure your employees know where to find them and how to use them? Are you using the right benefits administration software?
Communication is key so your employees can take advantage of the offerings you spend money on.
A great way to gather opinions is by using pulse surveys to check in on your employees and how they feel about your current menu of perks and benefits.
The takeaway
Employee benefits and perks are an integral part of your employee experience. Creating the right package takes time and experimentation, but comes with significant competitive advantages.
Keep in mind that your employees’ needs and wants will change over time. As your business grows and your employees move into different life stages, they may require different things from your company. To stay ahead of the curve, it's crucial that you survey your employees about their benefits and perks preferences, and keep an eye out for new ways to reward and engage your team.
Check out the latest research and statistics on employee resilience and engagement 👇
FAQ
What are the top 5 types of employee benefits?
The top five types of employee benefits are health insurance, retirement plans (such as 401k or pensions), paid time off (vacation, sick leave), family leave, and life insurance. If you offer these benefits it can help you attract and retain talent by enhancing overall employee satisfaction.
What are the top 5 types of employee perks?
The top five types of employee perks are flexible work, professional development, community and connection events, wellness stipends, and healthy snacks and beverages.
What are company-provided benefits?
A company-provided benefit is any form of non-wage compensation you offer to your workers in addition to their salaries. These typically include health insurance, paid time off, and life and disability insurance. Some company-provided benefits may be mandatory to offer, whereas others, like a retirement plan, are optional.
