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How to Validate a New Perk Before Adding It to Your Employee Benefits Program

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.

What Defines a Valuable Employee Perk Today?

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.

Today, the best motivational techniques for your employees are those that support your workers’ well-being, motivate and retain them, and attract and support more productive employees. 

What Is a List of Employee Benefits and Perks?

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)

  1. Traditional, tangible, non-monetary benefits – This covers things such as health insurance, retirement plans, payments for time not worked/sick leave, performance bonuses, and stock and equity options.
  2. Non-traditional benefits – Such as scholarship programs, financial assistance, childcare assistance, where needed, and diversity programs.
  3. Intangible benefits – Including flexible work hours, flexible workplace environment, and mental health and well-being support.

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.

BetterMe provides members with tailored plans that are based on their unique physical, psychological, and lifestyle needs and health goals. Start using BetterMe corporate wellness solutions to transform your team and business!

How Can You Assess Employee Needs Before Updating Your Perks?

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

  • Conduct a Survey

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.

  • Analyze the Data Received

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.

  • Pilot the Chosen Perk with a Small Group

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.

  • Be Open-Minded and Use Open Communication

This helps build trust and makes your employees feel seen and heard. 

  1. Once you have the data in hand, let the workers know that you’re going through it and give them a timeline of when you believe you’ll be done.
  2. If you require more feedback or clarification, invite your workers for open dialogue and use the input that you receive well, even if it’s not as positive as you thought it could be.
  3. You can also take things further by clearly explaining why the perks are being changed and why you need employees’ honest feedback and giving dates of when the perks will be rolled out.
  • Track, Evaluate, Adapt

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

What Data Sources Help Validate a New Perk Idea?

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

  • Utilization Data

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.

  • Employee Feedback

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.

Research has shown that group exercises for office workers can help foster team cohesion, reduce work-related musculoskeletal disorders, occupational stress, and burnout syndrome, and improve their mental health and general quality of life (4, 5, 6). 

Check out our article on exercises for office workers to see which workouts you can encourage your employees to do to improve their health.

  • Use Stay or Exit Interviews

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.

  • Benchmarking

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.

What Feedback Methods Work Best for Testing New Perks?

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:

  • Questionnaires

They can be anonymous or not and can have both open-ended and multiple-choice questions about the new perks.

  • Pulse Checks

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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  • One-On-One Conversations

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. 

  • Suggestion Boxes or Anonymous Boards

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.

How to Align New Perks with Company Culture and Values

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

  1. Understand Current Company Culture and Emphasize Core Values – Listening to your employees will help you understand what they believe the company culture to be. Emphasizing core values helps employees understand what you value and stand for.
  2. Analyze Current Benefits and Choose New Benefits That Fit Culture and Values – The answers from step one are important for this, as they allow you to better understand what your employees need. Using their answers and your core values, you can then get rid of perks that don’t align with employee needs or company values. Retain the ones that fit both factors and implement new ones that match worker needs and company values, goals, and strategy.
  3. Communication and Education – Perks are only useful to the company if the employees understand why they’re being implemented, what they do, and how they help them and the company. Open communication channels to receive feedback and deal with any questions that may arise.
  4. Implement New Perks – Once you’ve implemented any changes suggested by the employees and ensured that everything is aligned with your company values, roll out the benefits and track to see how well they are received. This will enable you to see if they’re a success or not.

Read more: The Gratitude Challenge: A Week of Positivity & Self-Care

What Red Flags Suggest That a Perk Isn’t Worth Adding?

Some red flags that could suggest a perk isn’t worth it include:

  1. The perk goes against the company’s core values.
  2. It has no long-term value or impact.
  3. It doesn’t consider the employee’s feedback on needs and wants.

Frequently Asked Questions

  • Can small companies benefit from expanding their perks program?

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.

  • What are low-cost perks that employees truly appreciate?

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.

  • How often should an employee perks program be updated?

It’s best to review your employee perks program on an annual basis.

  • What’s the best way to compare your perks to other companies?

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.

The Bottom Line

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.

DISCLAIMER:

This article is intended for general informational purposes only and does not serve to address individual circumstances. It is not a substitute for professional advice or help and should not be relied on for making any kind of decision-making. Any action taken as a direct or indirect result of the information in this article is entirely at your own risk and is your sole responsibility.

BetterMe, its content staff, and its medical advisors accept no responsibility for inaccuracies, errors, misstatements, inconsistencies, or omissions and specifically disclaim any liability, loss or risk, personal, professional or otherwise, which may be incurred as a consequence, directly or indirectly, of the use and/or application of any content.

You should always seek the advice of your physician or other qualified health provider with any questions you may have regarding a medical condition or your specific situation. Never disregard professional medical advice or delay seeking it because of BetterMe content. If you suspect or think you may have a medical emergency, call your doctor.

SOURCES:

  1. Employee benefits and company performance: Evidence from a high-dimensional machine learning model (2024, sciencedirect.com)
  2. Strategic Benefits: How Employee Benefits Can Create a Sustainable Competitive Edge (2021, researchgate.net)
  3. The Most Desirable Employee Benefits (2017, hbr.org)
  4. Psychosocial benefits of workplace physical exercise: cluster randomized controlled trial (2017, pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov)
  5. Effects of Group Fitness Classes on Stress and Quality of Life of Medical Students (2017, degruyterbrill.com)
  6. The importance of workplace exercise (2021, pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov)
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