In today’s fast-paced society, employees own a diverse and intangible set of needs and wants. Companies that retain traditional benefits packages might find themselves struggling to compete for employee loyalty. The 2018 U.S. Employee Benefits Trends StudyCheck shown that 73% of employees agree that having customized benefits would increase loyalty to their employer. Therefore, if your company benefit model is similar to this:
- Medical
- Dental
- Maternity
- Insurance
maybe it’s time to reconsider your package. With employees’ ever-changing needs, this list would no longer suffice. According to another social study, spending an additional $2 on drinks and snacks per employee yields an almost 20% productivity boost for a short period of concentration work. Companies should start acknowledging and capturing these “benefits of benefits” before they slip away.
DYNAMIC Benefits
With completely different dynamics, understanding your employee needs has since evolved into a whole new ballgame and the continuous race to fulfil them is even more gruelling. We can define dynamic benefitsas flexible benefits that aim to satisfy this temperamental, sensitive and ever-changing new set of needs. The following benefits would be the top 3 that companies can check out.
Effective Benefits
The most important yet easily overlooked benefit. These arise from unavoidable needs caused by every company’s unique profile. (Location, size, nature of business) Companies can consider the following situations:
Situation:
A company is located right in the centre of the Central Business District (CBD). The surrounding offers healthy and amazing looking food but tends to be pricier due to its location.
Solution:
The company can contact local food caterers to provide economical, healthy food options at a discounted rate to its employees.
Beazley Group (London) located in the “City of London” provides free lunch for their employees.
Source:https://www.businessinsider.com/14-tech-companies-best-employee-benefits-uk-2015-9
Situation:
A company has frequent dealings with foreign countries and therefore hires many international employees.
Solution:
The company can consider collaborating with a neighbouring apartment rental company to arrange for discounted accommodation. If many of the employees originate from a certain country, the company can even organise cultural events which help connect employees with their home country.
Addepar provides $300 housing stipend for employees living within a mile.
Source:https://www.wsj.com/articles/companies-pay-workers-to-live-close-to-the-office-1456223402
These issues are often overlooked as employees are aware of them but have decided to live with it. Therefore, they will be impressed when you offer these benefits as a solution for them!
Seasonal Benefits
These are benefits that help maintain productivity through the many seasons and events of the year. Besides working, many employees indulge in seasonal events such as Christmas, World Cup and Super Bowl. These events affect employee’s sleep cycle, mood and productivity. Companies can consider the following situation:
Situation:
Employees of a company are huge fans of the local football team. However, the World Cup only plays during the late hours. Being huge fans, they resort to having a few hours of sleep and face difficulty concentrating during work the following day.
Solution:
The company can allow employees to turn up at the office at any hour they wish but require them to clock in the usual amount of work hours. For example, 11 am to 7 pm or even 6 pm to 2 am so they can watch the match together immediately after!
Acas, a British employment consulting firm advises employers to take a flexible approach during the period of the world cup to maintain productivity.
Source: http://www.acas.org.uk/index.aspx?articleid=2953
This shows a deeper level of understanding and care towards their personal well-being, which is a crucial aspect that companies might sometimes neglect.
Convenient Benefits
We have all heard about companies giving employees free company merchandises or products. Sometimes even the “special employee benefit” to try out a new product of the company before it’s publicly released. However, consider taking a step further, allocating dedicated resources just for employees’ creativity to run wild.
Ever heard of:
Head down to try out our new flavour done by our flavour development team and let us know what you think!
Instead, make it:
Exclusive to ABC employees only! Create your own flavours at our Flavour Innovation Bar and stand to win $100 dollars!
“Not only do we have an open forum for our employees to encourage innovation, but any new business ideas that generate revenue will allow the employee to make a portion of those sales.” -Amber Lowry, Syssero
Source: https://www.syssero.com/
Employees know their company’s products inside out and learning that the company made something exclusively for them…they will know that too.
Benefiting too much?
Yes, benefits could very well be the icing on the cake, however, companies should understand that your employee is still human, and they will get comfortable after a while. This means increased expectations and taking it for granted. A good way to manage these expectations is to “give and take”. Remove what is redundant and give what is needed. It is never easy to please everyone but as long as you make it clear what is removed and given, you can leave them managing own expectations.
Conclusion
Remember, “A company is only as good as its people”, the primary point of this article remains at listening and understanding your employees. In this generation, employees are “fuelled” by many energy sources and “refuelling” them are not as straightforward anymore. Always make sure you are putting on your employees’ shoes when you are designing their benefit model and they will be sure to thank you for that!
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