What they fail to realize is that for today’s workers, salaries are more of a threshold than a scorecard. There are many more effective ways to keep your talent happy and engaged.
Company perks remain a major opportunity for most companies, that aren’t taking full advantage of the appeal of non-monetary benefits for most employees.
A recent industry study reported that 48% of employees would weigh company benefits and work perks, including the availability of snacks, in their decision to find their next job. This is also true when working with temporary workers since perks will more than likely determine if they stay after the assignment is done.
But what company perks at work really matter to employees? If salaries don’t always move the needle, what does? The answers might surprise you.
Who Would You Like To Give Gifts To?
1. Employee Recognition
Let’s start with how good it feels to be recognized at work. A simple thank-you or compliment can change your day. It can even do something really incredible: actually, make you happier. Now that’s a work perk!
This is especially important for virtual teams and hybrid teams. Moments of gratitude and recognition can make team members separated by distance feel closer and more connected.
And there are powerful business reasons to offer a recognition program as a job perk. A big one is that an employee who doesn’t get recognition at work is twice as likely to say they’ll walk out the door (probably to work for a competitor) in the next year. Don’t let it happen to you!
Bonusly lets you tie recognition to values – like creativity, accountability, teamwork, agility, or passion – so you can promote a culture that matches your vision. And thanks to deep reporting, and a feedback function, it’s all trackable. It works like this:
Happier team members and a healthier business – it’s why we think recognition is the ultimate employee perk. See why companies like ZipRecruiter, Hulu, Chobani, Headspace, and many more use Bonusly to supercharge their recognition programs.
2. Personalized Bucket-List Experiences
Employees today are looking for companies that truly care and recognize their whole person. And as the talent market becomes more competitive and employee retention becomes a top priority, personalized employee perks are more than important ever. The good news is that an authentic employee perk program has a powerful impact on employee retention, motivation, and company culture.
Blueboard makes it easy to send personalized and meaningful experiential rewards to your people. Your employees get to choose from a global, hand-curated catalog of experiences — from kayaking trips to racing sports cars to chasing the Northern Lights — and go on to exciting experiences that are meaningful to them.
This employee perk program is trusted by Salesforce, GoPro, Glassdoor, and other leading enterprise companies with over 500 employees around the world.
No matter the person, you can give them an experience they personally want right now and will remember forever making Blueboard a great work perk.
3. Care and Appreciation
All employees crave appreciation and want to know their employers care about them. To make a meaningful impact, companies need to express their appreciation in ways beyond the standard paycheck and benefits package.
This need becomes even more acute as offices shift to hybrid work models, leaving employees craving connections and bonds. Luckily, companies can rekindle that spirit of connection by starting thoughtful care and employee perk program with Caroo.
Caroo streamlines your entire gifting process, making it quicker and easier than ever to provide thoughtful gifts that make employees feel appreciated, inspired, and deeply cared for. Keep employees smiling and engaged by offering recognition boxes packed with nourishing snacks, practical productivity supplies, and celebratory goodies—all carefully curated to invigorate your company culture no matter where your team works.
4. Employee Discounts and Rewards
Today’s top talent is looking for more than just a maxed-out paycheck — they want roles at companies that enable a certain kind of lifestyle, which is why perks like the ones included in this article are more important than ever. In fact, this preference is so strong, one study found 80% of employees want perks or benefits more than they want a pay raise.
That’s why curated company exclusives, like the extensive global catalog accessible through Kazoo, make such a fantastic employee perk. Users get discounts on everything from dining to fitness to retail — plus, working with a third party eliminates the hassle of negotiating discounts yourself.
At the end of the day, you want your employees to know you’re looking out for their well-being whether it’s relevant to work or not, and exclusive employee discounts are a great way to show you care.
5. Wellness Program
A study published in the Annals of Internal Medicine found that the sedentary nature of American work-life is having a deleterious effect on the health of American workers. Sitting for too long at work brings with it a host of negative long-term health effects, including increased risk of cardiovascular issues and cancer, as well as chronic conditions like Type-2 diabetes.
As an employer, the sedentary demands placed on workers often result in increased healthcare costs, low morale, and a less-productive workforce (to name a few) … but many companies have found ways to fight this trend.
Workplace wellness programs are becoming an increasingly popular benefit offered by employers. Some wellness programs are simple, featuring one-time activities like biometric screenings or steps-based contests – while others are full-blown wellness initiatives aimed at shifting the workplace culture and encouraging healthier behaviors. Every company has its own unique goals and challenges, and there’s a wide range of programs available for employers to choose from.
One example is Nectar, which provides fully customizable wellness programs that make healthy activities relevant (and fun!) for employees of all shapes and sizes.
Nectar’s comprehensive platform (which includes a fully functional mobile app) fosters consistent, sustained engagement in daily health-habit improvement through social interactions, gamification, competition, cooperation, and praise/recognition – helping members improve their quality of life at work and at home.
If you’re looking for something simpler (or you have the resources available to create your own grass-roots program), we recommend checking out this list of awesome company wellness program ideas to help get you started.
6. Office Perks
As we’ve discussed on this blog before, work-life balance is a thing of the past. In fact, it’s an inherently flawed concept. The term “balance” implies that “work” and “life” are countering each other, perpetually at odds.
In our eyes, “work-life integration” is a much more accurate description.
Increasingly, the expectation – especially from Millennial workers – is that you should be able to be your true self at work. There’s no point in pretending that we have two separate personas, a “professional” you and a “real” you.
Part of this new attitude is the idea that the office should be an enjoyable place to be.
That’s where unique office perks come in.
Why do they matter? Because when you spend the majority of your time in your office, it would be nice if that office was, you know… a place you actually want to be.
Easily bring more joy into your office environment with team-building games and events from Go Game.
With Go Game, all you need is the desire to have a team-building event. Expert event producers ask you what you’re trying to accomplish, collect some basic logistical information about your team, and then hit the ground running—delivering you a detailed game plan and providing in-person support on the day of your event to make sure everything goes off without a hitch.
Choose from Go Game’s essential activities or talk to the team about a brand-new idea you want to bring to life.
Another simple and easy perk to provide is food.
A recent Harvard Business Review study showed that employees “typically consume one or several meals plus snacks during work hours.” This means that the food options available in the workplace matter a whole lot to the quality of the average office worker’s diet, and by extension, their overall health.
Employees will appreciate the gesture. Google is famous for offering healthy, gourmet-quality food choices that its employees love.
In fact, in a recent Quora survey, most Googlers cited the food options as the one perk they couldn’t live without.
The good news is you don’t have to have Google’s budget to make healthy food options available in your workplace. Affordable options like SnackNation bring the most beneficial, best-tasting snacks right to your office. Access to healthy snacks in the office will make for happier, healthier, and more productive employees.
Pro-Tip: Distributed employees also can benefit from office perks if you can go the extra mile and provide healthy snacks to their doorstep. Offering a couple of unique remote employee perks or sending a nice gift can go a long way with your dispersed employees.
Focusing on employee health isn’t just a nice gesture, it’s also good business. Companies that invest in health and wellness actually save money in the long run by curbing healthcare costs and reducing productivity loss due to illness.
The same Harvard Business Review study found that on average, employers who invested in comprehensive health and wellness initiatives (including healthy food options) saw a nearly 3-to-1 return in money saved.
Healthy snacking can be the foundation of an overarching wellness culture that lets employees know their health is important to your company. This message will also foster loyalty and strengthen the employer-employee relationship.
7. Home Office Budget
With work-from-home and flexible schedules becoming a more permanent arrangement, team members want a home office space that works for them. That means building it out from the ground up with high-quality furniture, a comfortable office chair, and all the accessories they need to stay productive. That’s a big cost for your team members, but you can help them create the perfect workspace by offering a home office budget as a work perk.
Awardco makes it easy to create a home office budget perk program for your team members and send funds in under five minutes. Set a spending limit, and customize which vendors they can purchase from — or leave it open so they can personalize their space however it works best for them. You can customize your Awardco cards with your brand logo and colors to tie all your employee perks together.
Then your team members can use their Awardco digital gift cards to order furniture, technology, and other essentials (like a colorful planner or a new coffee maker) to create an inspiring home office space — no matter where they are in the world.
Help your team members set up a productive and comfortable home office space with Awardco.
8. Paid Parental Leave
It’s an unspoken fact that career success often comes with tradeoffs and difficult choices. Professional men and women often feel like they have to choose between a demanding career and a rich family life, and delay starting their families in order to focus on the former.
Unfortunately, the company’s gain can be the employee’s loss, as some couples experience fertility problems as a result of waiting.
These choices often go unacknowledged by employers, but a few smart companies have developed programs that allow strong work and family lives to coexist.
In a bid to attract more top women, Apple recently made headlines by announcing that it will be providing complimentary egg freezing services for its female employees. And many companies, including Microsoft, offer extended maternity and paternity leave that go above and beyond minimum requirements.
Offering fertility programs and over-delivering on maternity benefits sends a clear signal to employees that there are more important things in life than work, and investing in them is yet another way to cultivate a culture of respect between employee and employer.
Employees will be less stressed, more loyal, and ultimately more productive in return.
9. 401(K) Plan, Retirement Plan, and/or Pension
Again, for many employees, peace of mind is invaluable.
Particularly, for those who worked during the financial uncertainty of the Great Recession of the late 2000s, financial security is a premium benefit.
And as it turns out, most employees have strong feelings about their retirement benefits. Fora Financial surveyed over 1,000 workers to gauge their retirement benefit perceptions. Here are some survey highlights:
- Workers without employee-sponsored retirement benefits don’t believe they’ll be able to retire comfortably. (Only 32% of this subset feel good about their retirement prospects.)
- Retirement plans double the likelihood that employees will be satisfied with their benefits package.
31% of employees who don’t receive retirement benefits from their employers are thinking about switching jobs.
Many employees find personal finance and financial planning a bit of a mystery and appreciate it when their employers help them plan for the future. 401(K)s and other retirement plans are convenient, automatic ways to do just that.
Employers can step their savings game up by subsidizing employee savings, either matching or partially matching the contributions employee pay into their retirements and finding cost-effective ways to provide benefits for employees.
10. Healthcare Insurance
40% of respondents to Glassdoor’s Q3 2015 employment confidence survey said that they value health insurance more than a pay raise.
The reasons for this are manifold. Of course, until very recently, there was no affordable public health insurance option, and the only feasible way for most Americans to afford insurance was through their employer.
Employee-sponsored coverage is still generally much less expensive than public or private insurance.
But most of all, there is peace of mind that comes with knowing that you and your loved ones are covered in the event of a major accident or illness, and you really can’t put a price on that.
There are perks that come with health insurance on the employer side as well. Companies benefit from reduced absenteeism due to illness (thanks to free or nearly-free preventive care), as well as higher engagement due to the fact that employer-sponsored health insurance gives employees a sense that they are cared for and appreciated.
11. Vacation / Paid Time Off
It’s been said that time is our most valuable commodity.
As Rick Warren writes in his book, The Purpose Driven Life, “Time is your most precious gift because you only have a set amount of it. You can make more money, but you can’t make more time…. Your time is your life.”
Similarly, studies have shown that once our basic needs are met, experiences contribute to our long-term happiness much more than material things.
For these reasons, a preponderance of respondents to Glassdoor’s survey indicated that they valued vacation or paid time off over a salary raise.
Many companies have escalated this idea to its logical extreme and instituted open vacation policies and summer Friday’s off.
While it may seem counterintuitive, companies like Netflix and Austin-based Umbel have found that an unlimited vacation policy can have a wide range of benefits, including more productive employees.
Don’t be mistaken – an unlimited or “open” vacation policy doesn’t mean that employees can take off half the year and still collect a paycheck. Rather, companies that adopt these policies allow employees as much PTO as they need to recharge as long as they meet deadlines and produce results.
Aligning your vacation policy with results rather than basing it on accrual can have a profound effect on your organization’s overall culture.
Zen Payroll CEO Joshua Reeves believes that this focus helps create “an ownership mentality,” and finds that an open vacation policy empowers his employees to focus on what’s best both for themselves and for the company.
Moreover, an open vacation policy signals to employees that their employer trusts them to keep projects on track and deliver results while being free to take all the time off they need. This trust engenders a feeling of mutual respect between the company and its employees, and the result is a more balanced, more productive workforce.
During this time, they are forbidden from checking work email or working on Media Temple-related projects. Many employees cite this perk as the reason they joined the company.
Sabbaticals are gaining in popularity across corporate America, typically lasting five weeks for employees who have been with the company for a minimum of five years. And while five weeks of paid time off might seem like a large chunk of unproductive time, it actually only amounts to 2% of an employee’s time within a five-year span.
Plus, employees return refreshed, energized, and with a new perspective they wouldn’t have gained otherwise. This fresh perspective can even result in creative ideas or new market opportunities.
12. Performance Bonus
As we’ve demonstrated so far, the effectiveness of monetary incentives (particularly salaries) has its limits. However, that’s not to say that monetary incentives as a whole don’t work.
The key is to connect monetary rewards to the emotions that keep employees engaged in their work.
Performance bonuses are a fantastic way to do just that. By tying the reward to results, performance bonuses give employees a sense of ownership and control.
It helps motivate them in their work, and gives them a tangible ownership stake in their role. I.e., if they perform and hit their goals, they will receive a reward – one that they both earned and deserve.
Here’s some hard evidence: The Incentive Research Foundation conducted an analysis of 45 studies on the effects of incentives. The researchers found that incentives have a positive impact on performance. Here’s what they had to say:
“If selected, implemented, and monitored correctly, incentive programs— with awards in the form of money or tangible awards—increase performance by an average of 22 percent. Team incentives can increase performance by as much as 44 percent.”
They also found that performance incentives engage employees and attract qualified new candidates.
13. Paid Sick Days
Similar to Vacation or PTO, paid sick days give employees back their most valuable commodity – their time – while also letting them know that they are cared for and appreciated.
An added benefit? It sets the right tone to keep your office healthy during cold and flu season.
And that’s a public health threat! The National Partnership for Women and Families says,
“People without paid sick days are 1.5 times more likely than those with paid sick days to report going to work with a contagious illness like the flu or a viral infection.”
This issue creates more problems when workers without paid sick leave work in restaurants, stores, and other places where they talk to lots of people in addition to people in the office.
We all know cultures in which taking a sick day is seen as a sign of weakness.
But offering paid sick days signals to employees that it’s ok to stay home when they’re under the weather.
By doing so, contagious employees stay away, and your company is much less likely to be decimated by widespread illness.
And offering sick days isn’t simply about physical health. Some recent research measured the psychological distress employees without paid sick leave experience. The results were startling! Workers without paid sick leave felt considerable psychological distress, and that distress interfered with their daily lives.
Offering sick days might just keep workers well in body and mind.
14. Flexible Schedule (Work From Home)
Flexibility is increasingly becoming a desired perk for the modern employee, who is trying to balance a myriad of personal and professional responsibilities, including education and familial duties.
It’s especially true for employees with children at home. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, both parents work in 60% of the households with children in the U.S.
A flexible schedule – including the ability to work from home – is a necessity for these families, who need to be able to juggle multiple responsibilities.
Emotionally, affording employees flexibility in their schedule demonstrates that they are trusted partners (not just 9-5ers chained to a desk), and leads to higher engagement.
Ultimately, a flexible schedule leads to a greater quality of life. Employees feel like they don’t have to sacrifice their careers in order to focus on their family or education – and vice versa. This provides more long-term value than a salary ever could.
Also, be sure to check the Wellness Industry Trends Report from our friends at Wellable where they delve even deeper into the subject of flexible working and other employee wellness & perks.
15. Employee Development Plans
In their book The Alliance, LinkedIn CEO Reid Hoffman and co-authors Ben Casnocha and Chris Yeh lay out how the employer-employee relationship has changed.
Lifetime employment, they argue, is no longer possible (nor desirable), and that means both companies and their employees ought to engage in a mutually beneficial relationship modeled after a “tour of duty” in the military. In fact, the relationship is moving away from a transactional model and toward one that’s focused on the growth of both parties.
What does this mean? Well, it implies an acknowledgment that the tenure of the average employee is likely only going to be 3-5 years and that the company is responsible for the personal and professional growth of the employee during that time.
Employee Development Plans are a perfect way to reflect this changing dynamic and ensure a mutually enriching relationship.
At SnackNation we’ve implemented IDPs or Individual Development Plans. In them, employees work with their managers to identify four personal and four professional goals, as well as a pathway to achieving them. We ask employees where they want to be in five years, and determine the right steps to get there.
Bonus: You can download a blank version of our IDP template here (no email required).
In our economy, where job-hopping is the norm, employees need to constantly augment their skill sets, and employee development is priceless.
16. Tuition Reimbursement
Tuition costs have exploded in the last decade. The latest figures by the College Board reveal a 26% increase in tuition and fees for four-year private institutions and a 40% increase for four-year public colleges.
The numbers for graduate and professional programs are just as grim, with the average tuition for a Top 20 Business School setting you back more than $100K in total, and a comparable law school education costing upwards of $50K per year.
But the real kicker is the opportunity cost of not working for 2-3 years, which nearly doubles the actual cost.
The beauty of tuition reimbursement – and why it’s so highly valued by so many employees – is that it alleviates both the real and opportunity costs. Employees can simultaneously work and go to school, saving doubly in tuition fees and the opportunity costs of being unemployed.
17. Discounted Access To Company Products or Services
Depending on your business, discounted access to your company’s products or services – or “dogfooding” – can be an exciting perk for employees.
The term dogfooding comes from the idea that a company with a good product should be able to “eat its own dog food,” and the practice can make employees feel valued and included. For product managers, early access for employees can even aid in the development process.
Many technology companies choose to beta test their products internally first, killing two birds with one stone: employees feel included and “in the know,” while product managers gain invaluable feedback as they get their product ready for launch.
Apple, Samsung, and Google have adopted this approach, providing employees with their much-hyped products before testing outside the company.
In the same vein, entertainment companies like Discovery Communications hold internal premieres of anticipated programs before they air for the general public. Again, the effect is to make your entire workforce feel involved in the process and to express gratitude for their contribution to the final product.
Here at SnackNation, we take “product testing” very seriously:
18. Gym Membership
Picture this: you work in a typical nine-to-five cube farm.
You put in a solid 8-10 hours per day at a desk in your demanding, high-stress job. Each day leaves you physically and mentally drained. You have a gym membership, but your commute makes it hard to work out in the morning. and by the time you get home, you are usually too exhausted to move.
“Maybe tomorrow…” you say as you dive into your Netflix queue. This cycle repeats day in and day out, until one day you catch yourself in the mirror… and it’s not pretty.
If this sounds familiar, you’re not alone. Anyone in today’s modern office environment knows how easy it is to fall into this trap. Sitting for the majority of your day, every day for long periods of time inevitably takes a toll on the body.
It’s no surprise that 22% of employees polled in a CareerBuilder survey say on-site fitness centers are their most desired office perk.
A 2015 study published in the Annals of Internal Medicine found that the sedentary nature of American work-life is having a deleterious effect on the health of American workers.
Sitting for too long at work brings with it a host of negative long term health effects, including increased risk of cardiovascular issues and cancer, as well as chronic conditions like Type 2 diabetes.
As an employer, the effect of the sedentary demands placed on workers includes increased health care costs and a less productive workforce. But many companies have found ways to fight this trend.
Massachusetts-based EMC provides wellness incentives for health-conscious choices like getting a flu shot or joining a gym.
Others, like personal genomics company 23andMe, go a step further, providing onsite gym and workout space, and encouraging their employees to engage in physical activity throughout the day. In addition to offering daily onsite fitness sessions that include yoga, Pilates, and strength training, the company also makes treadmill desks available for their employees.
If you don’t have space or money to invest in an onsite gym, there are a number of creative ways to introduce physical activity into the workplace.
Bringing in a trainer or yoga instructor once or twice a week for group fitness classes at a nearby park can provide a much-needed boost. Even something as simple as encouraging daily stretching or walking meetings can have a tremendous impact.
But make sure that physical activities are never mandatory. Employees need to feel that they are free to choose their level of engagement in these programs, no matter how good it is for them. Mandatory health programs can make employees feel that they are being dictated to, and will diminish morale.
Integrating daily or weekly voluntary exercise activities during work hours signals to employees that their employers care about their health and wellbeing, and this strategy will actually pay dividends in the long run by shaving healthcare costs and keeping employees healthy and productive.
19. Stock, Stock Options and/or Equity
Similar to performance bonuses, stock options and equity give employees a real sense of ownership in the success of the business.
This helps bolster the emotional connection between employees and their work that’s so important for creating an engaged workforce.
When yogurt company Chobani announced it would give all its employees equity awards, the company’s CEO said,
“this isn’t a gift. It’s a mutual promise to work together with a shared purpose and responsibility. To continue to create something special and of lasting value.”
Employees have a sense that their working life isn’t a mere transaction, but that they are working to create something bigger than themselves – and that they’ll be rewarded for their success.
In fact, there are some well-documented benefits to offering employees stocks and equity. One study found that employees, especially young employees, with ownership in their companies…
- Enjoy higher median incomes than employees with no equity
- Possess a higher net wealth than employees with no equity
- Can access more overall benefits at work than employees with no equity
- Experience more job stability than employees with no equity
To summarize, employees with equity experience benefits that go beyond just owning equity.
20. Childcare Assistance
As we’ve already seen, both parents work in the majority of households with children in the U.S. This means that childcare is non-negotiable for millions of workers.
Childcare costs can add up quickly, and anything to alleviate the burden is valuable.
And getting child care assistance from companies may be the only way some families can afford child care and plan to grow their families. The Economic Policy Institute aggregated child care costs across the United States. Here are some startling statistics on child care costs in Arizona, a state where costs are considered medium to average.
- Infant care will set you back about $786 per month
- Care for 4-year-old costs about $625 per month
- Families with one infant can expect to spend almost 20% of their income on care
- Care for one infant and one 4-year-old cost more than the average monthly rent
In other words, many families don’t even come close to earning enough to send their children to care.
21. Commuter Assistance
It’s not secret. We spend way too much time commuting.
According to Texas A&M Transportation Institute’s annual Urban Mobility Scorecard, commuters in major cities spent between 50 and 82 hours in their cars last year.
(Think of everything you could’ve accomplished in that time!)
Between rideshares, passes for public transportation, or even shuttle buses, there are a plethora of ways companies can subsidize commuting.
All things being equal, an employee will take a job with a short commute over a long one. In fact, she might even take money in exchange for a shorter commute.
Commuter assistance can go a long way towards improving their quality of life, and is therefore a perk that moves the needle when it comes to hiring and retention.
Bonus: Diversity Program
Hiring for “cultural fit” has been a celebrated concept in the last several years. This basically means evaluating candidates not only for their skills and experience but for how well they might fit into the organization.
In fact, many companies (particularly startups) only hire people that they “would like to have a beer with.”
But, as Dan Lyons recently highlighted in his book Disrupted, that can be code for “I only hire people who look like me.”
And as useful as it can be to make sure that newly hired employees jive well with the established culture, this practice also brings a danger that you’re just creating an army of “cultural clones” (an idea proposed by Adam Grant in his new book Originals).
A better practice is to hire for “cultural contribution.” This requires auditing your existing culture and actively seek out diverse points of view.
Creating a culture of diversity and inclusion takes time, but the harmony and productivity it returns will be well worth the effort. The Society of Human Resource Management recommends forming a council of leaders committed to diversity and inclusion.
We also have plenty of resources to help when you’re ready to start your overall cultural deep dive. Check out our State of Workplace Culture Report and then dive into some examples of outstanding company cultures, winning core values, and workplace engagement tips.
In the long run, hiring for cultural contribution is a more sustainable practice and one in which everyone benefits.
Bonus: Reduced Prescription Drug Costs
The cost of healthcare has become a major source of frustration and pain for many Americans. So it shouldn’t come as a surprise that providing high-quality and affordable healthcare is one of the most important perks when it comes to attracting and retaining employees.
But sometimes even the best insurance plan leaves something to be desired, especially when an employee’s necessary medication isn’t covered, or a copay is simply too high. For this reason, thousands of companies are using a FREE solution from GoodRx that helps significantly lower out-of-pocket prescription costs for employees. For instance, while $15 and $20 copays are common with insurance plans, thousands of drugs are under $10 with GoodRx.
Many are surprised at how often GoodRx provides lower prices than even “good” insurance. One example comes right from a GoodRx employee who was prescribed modafinil to help with sleep apnea and daytime fatigue. Despite having good insurance, he learned that this generic drug was not covered by the plan — and that the retail price for thirty 200 mg pills would be $798! However, the discount price through GoodRx for the same medication was only $26, which is more than 95% off the retail price!
GoodRx is accepted at 70,000+ pharmacies and is 100% FREE to employers and employees. Plus, there are no deductibles, pre-authorizations or drug tiers — just great prices on the prescription drugs your employees need to stay healthy.
