Employees can make or break your company, regardless of its size. In fact, in a study published in the Management Accounting Research journal, researchers stated that “Employees are essential company stakeholders in enabling strategy execution and, thus, play a vital role in the success of companies (1).”
In the modern competitive business environment, it’s more important than ever for companies to retain their best employees. This is where the employee perks program or employee benefits come in.
Some may see this as a necessary evil, but studies have shown that these employee benefits can have a substantial impact on employee retention, attraction, and performance, which helps your bottom line (2). But how do you determine which employee benefits and perks are best suited for your workforce?
Let’s find out the best way to determine which of the many employee perks ideas work and how to determine if your workers will like them or not.
An employee perks program is defined as a benefits initiative that helps enhance the work environment through unique incentives that go beyond traditional compensation. You can think of employee benefits as non-wage contributions that go beyond the salary and benefits that are given to workers.
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A good employee benefits and perks program includes factors such as compensation, benefits, work-life balance programs, recognition programs, performance management, and talent development (2).
This can also be further broken down into the following categories (2)
All of these work well as employee perks for small businesses or even large companies. As an employer, you should choose the perks that suit your employees and budget the best.
For more on the importance of work-life balance, check out our article to get an in-depth look at how you can implement it and how it can help you, your employees, and your bottom line.
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While all the above employee perks and benefits are great, they won’t necessarily work for every company’s workforce.
For example, a study by the Harvard Business Review in 2017 showed the most desirable work benefit to be better health, vision, and dental insurance (3), while a more recent study showed companies that offered vision/dental healthcare (or even 401(k) or employee discounts) to be associated with bad company performance (1).
So how do you determine the perk that your employees will appreciate the most? The simplest way is to ask the people who work for you using a simple 3-step scheme:
Survey → Pilot → Analyze
Once you’ve narrowed down your list of possible employee perks program ideas, conduct a survey using questionnaires, suggestion boxes, one-on-one meetings, or focus groups. The method you choose can be determined by the size of the company, the mode of communication used, or even the work culture.
Once all the answers have been submitted and compiled, take some time to go through each one meticulously. Identify what workers desire the most and which ideas received the fewest votes. This can help you better understand what your employees need and allow you to identify and tweak any gaps in your current or developing perks programs.
Before rolling out a perk company-wide, consider piloting it with a small group of employees. This will allow you to test the waters, collect initial feedback, and measure satisfaction in a low-risk environment. It will provide a great opportunity to fine-tune the offer based on real user experience.
BetterMe provides test access to the program so your company can fully evaluate all the benefits and see how well it is aligned with the needs of your employees.
This helps build trust and makes your employees feel seen and heard.
People change and so do their needs. By tracking the engagement and satisfaction of workers, you’re able to measure how well the program is doing. Doing reviews every so often allows you to take a deeper look at how well the perks are aligned with the changing times and people, while being adaptable allows you to keep up with the times, letting you change the benefits and perks to better align with employee needs.
Read more: 10 Summer Wellness Activities for Employees to Stay Energized
Employee benefits preferences are largely based on individual needs, which is why finding a way to source information about a new perk idea is essential to its success. In addition to the surveys mentioned above, other data sources you can use include
As seen in the list of employee benefits and perks section above, these perks fall into many different categories.
If you already have perks in your company, you can use the existing data to better understand which perks the employees sign up for/use and which they aren’t keen on.
This can help you figure out if the new idea you have has a high chance of success or not. Your human resource department is a good place to get this data.
This offers a more direct way (compared to surveys), which lets you see and hear what the employees want. You can communicate the new benefit idea to your employees and how it will be implemented and used, then allow them to give you their honest feedback on whether or not they think the idea is good.
Encourage them to come to you with their honest thoughts and opinions and be willing to listen. This will allow you to have accurate info on the idea and help foster trust between you and your workers.
You can get feedback directly from the employees, their team managers, or through focus groups.
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Check out our article on exercises for office workers to see which workouts you can encourage your employees to do to improve their health.
When speaking to your employees about why they choose to stay or leave the company, you can ask them which benefits they found useful/valuable and which they think may benefit from a change.
This can help you see if the new proposal works for the current needs of the people who work for you or not. It could also reveal gaps that may need filling in the future, thereby increasing employee satisfaction and loyalty.
It never hurts to compare what your company is offering – or considering offering – to employees with the perks offered by other companies in the same industry. Benchmarking is usually done through industry reports, industry or HR associations, or peer surveys if the industry is small enough to allow this.
To evaluate the effectiveness of a perk, apply the following formula:
Perk ROI = (Utilization × Impact) / Cost
This simple equation will help you determine if a perk is worth the investment. A high-ROI perk is one that is widely used, makes a meaningful difference in employee satisfaction or productivity, and is cost-effective.
Once you’ve rolled out the new perks, you have to make sure they work as intended, and above all, that your employees are using them. Some modes you can use to get feedback include:
They can be anonymous or not and can have both open-ended and multiple-choice questions about the new perks.
Unlike questionnaires that take time, quick pulse checks are simple, often informal, and sometimes anonymous. They are a good way to regularly check in with your employees to see how they feel about the new benefit.
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If your company is small enough, you can have individual conversations with your workers to see if the perk(s) you offered fit their needs and if there are any changes they hope can be introduced or implemented.
The above methods are rather direct and, in some cases, may lead to biased information if the employees feel like they have been placed in the spotlight. The use of suggestion boxes or anonymous feedback boards could help eliminate this issue, thereby offering more honest feedback.
A company’s culture and values help enhance its identity and guide decision-making, and they can also help attract and retain talent, boost employee engagement and performance, and build trust regardless of hierarchical positions within the company.
To ensure any new benefits are aligned with the company’s culture and values, you should
Read more: The Gratitude Challenge: A Week of Positivity & Self-Care
Some red flags that could suggest a perk isn’t worth it include:
Yes, they can. As previously mentioned, perks help with employee retention, attraction, and performance, which helps the bottom line. Losing a good employee can be incredibly costly for a small business. Expanding their benefits catalog to something the employees want and need could help increase company loyalty and employee retention. Perks like family-friendly policies, i.e. prioritizing parenthood, flexible work arrangements such as hybrid work, health and wellness resources, a less strict dress code, and employee discounts, are some low-cost perks employees may enjoy. It’s best to review your employee perks program on an annual basis. As mentioned above, the best way to use this is through benchmarking, which can be done through peer surveys in smaller industries and through industry reports or industry or HR associations in larger fields.Frequently Asked Questions
Can small companies benefit from expanding their perks program?
What are low-cost perks that employees truly appreciate?
How often should an employee perks program be updated?
What’s the best way to compare your perks to other companies?
If you hope to retain your employees and improve performance in this competitive market, you need a good employee perks program. We hope the above tips will help you make a valuable program that considers the current wants and needs of your employees and also incorporates your company’s core values and goals.
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