Fostering Employee Experience with 3 Popular Perks and Benefits

Today's post is brought to you by Josh Hrala of CareerMinds.

In today’s world, benefits and perks can really boost the employee experience at your company while creating an engaging and fulfilling workplace at the same time. We’re not talking about 401Ks and other traditional benefits, though. Those may have been eye-catching back in the day, but times are different now.

According to Glassdoor, 3 out of 5 job candidates say that an employer’s perks and benefits package is one of the top considerations when applying to new jobs. That’s a lot of weight put on things that, for far too many companies, come second.

So, what benefits are the kids into these days if not 401ks and sick days? Fear not, we put together this handy little list of ideas you can use to make sure your company offers a new and exciting perk package that will make your staff enjoy coming to work while fostering your employee experience – and employer brand – at the same time.

1.  Paid Time Off

Sick days and personal days are great, if not mandatory things a company needs to have in their benefits package. But saying an employee can have off because they are ill or have a personal emergency isn’t truly a perk, it’s just being a decent person.

If you want your employees to get excited about having time off, which improves productivity in the long run, you need to think a bit differently. REI, for example, gives their employees two “Yay Days” a year so they can spend time outside, which keeps with their overall brand image while also letting their employees blow off steam.

The World Wildlife Fund has “Panda Fridays” where staff members get to take every other Friday off for personal time. Salesforce takes a different approach, giving staffers 6 days off per year to work for charity. If the staffer completes all six days, the company donates $1,000 to said charity, incentivizing the team member to use all of their days.

Besides personal time, many of the top rated companies give ample maternity leave, ensuring new parents can be with their little one.  

2. Life Services

If you want your staff to be productive, they have to be thinking about work instead of the pile of laundry they have to do when they get home, which is why many companies are starting to offer everyday services to their staff members coupled with traditional life services like leadership development. 

According to ADP, some of the most top rated perks involve handling day-to-day tasks like offering free lunches and other food items, commuter services like auto repair and toll reimbursement, and even laundry services.

These everyday things are often coupled with cheap or free gym membership plans, yoga classes, and flexible working arrangements that allow employees to work from home, at a coffee shop or in the park.

Basically, what matters is that your employees get their work done. If they want to hit the gym during lunch or work from the park, does it really matter that they are in the office? Probably not (within reason, of course). But having those benefits available matter a whole lot to the employee.

3. Student Loan Help 

Quick, think of a great way to retain millennial talent. No, it’s not free avocado toast like some will have you believe, it’s tuition reimbursement.

An estimated 44 million people have student loan debt and any perk that will help chisel away at it will be insanely popular. In fact, when millennials look at jobs, tuition repayment is one of the top three benefits they look for.

PWC offers $1,200 a year for employees to put towards their loans. nVidia offers $6,000 per year in tuition help. While nVidia is on the high end, many other companies offer between $100 and $300 per month to help out.

Forbes has called student loan reimbursement programs the hottest employee benefit of 2017. Based on how much debt there is, we don’t anticipate that changing anytime soon.

If you couple these benefits in with traditional ones like 401ks and health care plans (the most important benefit for many), your employees will be more incentivized to work harder and stay with the company longer. Also, based on the research, benefits also have a tremendous influence on your company’s Glassdoor rating. In short, proper benefits are a win-win for you and your employees.

Josh wrangles content for Careerminds. Check out blogs like this one here.