Offering excellent work perks in your company is becoming more important since the talent pool changes and has pickier about where they operate. As a small business owner, understanding the current employee perks you offer, and the ones that perhaps you could add on, may be critical to retaining and gaining talent as you compete against larger fish.
What Function Perks Are & Why They Are Important
Work perks are the extra benefits, both tangible and intangible, that an employer supplies for employees. Those catered lunches offered by the the booming tech giants are a more generally recognized work perk, as are the crazy holiday celebrations notoriously thrown by investment banks. But conventional benefits can also be work perks, such as health insurance and paid time off.
Work perks are important to companies of all shapes and sizes as they’re frequently key to your business culture, and have real value to workers, regardless of if there’s money attached. We’ve even conducted our latest research on job perks, and discovered that millennials value the same sorts of work perks that other age classes do, showing you exactly how important they are to individuals when deciding on a job.
Having great work perks that make sense for the business can help you to:
- Maintain and attract new talent
- Enhance your reputation as a company and business
- Offer an atmosphere that reflects your company’s core values
- Improve employee participation and worker satisfaction
Let’s now first glance at what great work perks are important for workers.
16 Employee Perks From Around the Internet
Benefits like health insurance are considered a job perk since many employers aren’t required to provide them. Unsurprisingly, these normal benefits still have the largest impact on employee satisfaction, based on Glassdoor Economic Research.
The 9 most appreciated work benefits include:
- Perk 1: Health Insurance
- Perk two: Holiday & Paid Time Off
- Perk 3: Retirement Plan or 401k Plan
- Perk 4: Dental Insurance
- Perk 5: Maternity Leave
- Perk 6: Paternity Leave
- Perk 7: Paid Sick Days
- Perk 8: Vision Insurance
- Perk 9: Paid Vacations
Employing a free tool such as Gusto HR Basics can help you create vacation, holiday, and sick day policies online so that you can store everything in one place for your workers to see. After that you can manage time off requests and blessings directly through Gusto HR Basics. Click here to get started at no cost.
See Gusto HR Basics
Let us check out a few more worker perks from other businesses.
Considering that the aforementioned work perks are much more like conventional benefits, we polled small business owners to find out about the unique, out-of-the-box, work perks they offer
Our initial 5 perk examples include Amanda Windsor, PR and Outreach Manager of Power Digital Marketing. Amanda told us Power Digital Marketing supplies an Unbelievable surroundings through its employee perks, which include:
Perk 10: Infinite PTO
Our motto at Power Digital is”work hard, play hard,” and we enforce this policy with our unlimited spare time offering. It’s so nice knowing that as long as your job and responsibilities are handled, PTO isn’t an issue.
From our HR pro:
According to SHRM, unlimited PTO has become a lot of media attention and for good reason- it is popular and appealing to employees. Management has found, paradoxically, not placing a limit on PTO makes people take less time off. However, we caution you to place a solid policy in place on your employee handbook should you do choose to provide unlimited PTO, especially if you are in a country where you’re needed to pay out off time in the case of firing or layoff.
Perk 11: Presidents’ Club
As a business, we establish aggressive goals as a group and individuals. When we reach those aims, we celebrate! Our workers who meet & surpass these goals are awarded into our President’s Club. In 2014, President’s Club went to Maui, Hawaii. In 2015 President’s Club went to Guanacaste, Costa Rica. And, last March the 2016 President’s Club set off into the island of Kauai, Hawaii!
Perk 12: Mentorship Program
Recognizing our team’s thirst for knowledge and desire to have access to opportunities to grow from the office, the spouses set their heads together and created Power Pairs — a new-age employee development program that matches varied employees together and lets them share private expertise on a peer-to-peer level. The 3-month program sharpens employees’ skillsets, forges deeper and more purposeful work relationships and takes the company into another level! The winning pair which comes up with the most revolutionary idea for your business even receives $1,000 for their efforts!
Perk 13: Catered Lunches
To keep our team healthy and continue to create the friendship and bonds between teammates, we concentrate virtually every lunch so that team members can eat healthier and enjoy lunch together.
From our HR pro:
Many contributors mentioned having healthy alternatives for lunches (and for snacks) as a fantastic work perk they provide. Even though many do not go so much as Power Digital Marketing and providing it every day, there were a number of mentions of the and supporting their workers this way.
Perk 14: Pet Friendly Workplace
We have a single office dog (Enzo) who’s in regular and workers bring in their fur friends also!
From our HR pro:
While I’m a complete puppy person, as an HR consultant, I have to caution a few things on supplying a pet-friendly workplace (which is getting more common on the West Coast). First, you need to ensure that your construction (if you rent ) permits for animals on site and seek consent from the leasing company. Second, you will need to also ensure that your workers are truly in support of this (i.e. versus those with allergies or even a fear of animals) and think about an anonymous questionnaire to be sure everybody’s voice is heard.
Ultimately, we urge that this being an option once per week or a month versus daily. Havings pets in the office can be very distracting, and it requires owners to walk their pets every couple of hours. There would have to be strong guidelines along the kind of pet can come, the demeanor of their pet and the evidence of its vaccination and shots, and a touch on a pet policy which would also align with innovative discipline for offenses.
More Great Work Perks from Around the Web
The contributions don’t stop there though. We found an overwhelming number of organizations who had more interesting thoughts and creative ways to keep people enthusiastic about coming to work with great work perks.
Perk 15: Assessing the City as a Team
Among my favorite perks at JotForm is that we go out to a restaurant of our choosing for a team lunch once a week. I’ve heard of lunches earlier, but it’s really nice to get out of the workplace, research San Francisco a little, and find a new restaurant.
— Chad Reid, Director of Communications out of JotForm
Perk 16: Free Car Oil Change
One Click partnered with a travel mechanic who comes about after a month and does tire rotations, oil changes, and some other checks that are asked . Employees love this because it makes life a little easier rather than having to take time off work to obtain their car worked on.
— Katie Wenclewicz, PR Specialist from One Click Ventures
Perk 17: Particular Trips
For a travel management company founded on our genuine passion for travel, it’s critical that our workers stay educated and involved in the area of traveling on a private level. We cover every employee to take an optional annual”FAM” (familiarization) trip to find their selection of a new destination or expertise, and always offer employees additional FAM excursions from our travel partners. These paid holidays are in addition to standard PTO, which can be incredibly valuable to the employee but also enables Cadence to remain conversational and relevant about travel. In fact, we recently replaced our office art with photos of recent worker travel experiences to make an ongoing celebratory conversation concerning traveling.
— Wendy Burk, CEO & Founder from Cadence
Perk 18: Game Time
Once a week, we take about 20-30 minutes out of daily, collect together in the seminar room, and play a game. This can vary from amusing, nerf gun target practice, or even (hilariously) Cards Against Humanity. It is a great way to break out of the weekly routine, and actually bond and laugh with our coworkers. While it might appear silly, and just be 20-30 minutes each week, it really helps create a feeling of camaraderie in the workplace.
— Haley Steed, Outreach Specialist from Direct Online Marketing
Perk 19: Free Bike Tune Ups & Repairs
Among our work perks here in FFunction is free bicycle tune ups/repairs. The business provides this as an incentive to get everybody commuting by bike instead of by automobile. Most workers take up the deal (approximately half of the group commute by bike, and just two of these bike year-round, snow banks, blizzards, whatever!) .
— Rebecca Galloway, Communications Manager from FFunction
Perk 20: 2 Incredible Months
“Magical Month of MyCorp” and”Summer Camp MyCorp” are in December and July of each year and include enjoyable events every day of these months. It can vary from hula hooping, to lottery tickets, to Starbucks runs, to ice cream trucks and lunch deliveries. We decorate our desks, have signature holiday drinks organized by every department, and play games.
— Deborah Sweeney, CEO from MyCorporation
Perk 21: Fancy Coffee Drinks
We’ve got an espresso bar in our shop and we keep it stocked with all the goodies so employees can make their favourite coffee drinks anytime they wish. It saves them from having to pay several dollars for Starbucks, and they’re able to make several per day if they want to.
— Ron Yates, CEO from Titanium-Jewelry
Perk 22: Education Reimbursement
We encourage our employees to find out more about gemology and jewelry through G.I.A. (Gemological Institute of America). G.I.A. presents many different educational applications and certifications. Once a worker successfully completes one of the programs they’re reimbursed for the cost of their tuition.
— Ron Yates, CEO from Titanium-Jewelry
Perk 23: Employee Award Program
Employees may nominate fellow staff members for going above and beyond while keeping among the five Core Values, which are Commitment, Innovation, Being Current, Excellence, and Respect. Each nomination enters that worker into a drawing for a all expenses paid trip for 2. The nominator is also entered into another drawing for a prize.
— Kristi Piehl, CEO and Founder of Media Minefield
Perk 24: Zen Bathroom Breaks
Turn washroom into a peaceful sanctuary — washroom is more important than we believe, it is a location where workers go to find some for privacy at work. Keep it clean, hygienic and well preserved. Put some refreshing plants in, and put in soothing music.
— Katrina McKinnon, Community Outreach in Alsco
Perk 25: Useful”Life” Trainings
Show that you care about your workers’ health and safety — arrange first aid training, make medical supplies and first aid accessible, and encourage injured and sick employees.
— Katrina McKinnon, Community Outreach at Alsco
Now, I will discuss some of my ideas and things I’ve observed from my days as an HR person.
6 More Great Work Perks From Our HR Expert
Below are 5 of the most common work perks that I have seen businesses offer when I had been an in-house HR Manager and as an HR Advisor. The majority of these are very reasonably priced, which is why I think you see them so frequently.
Perk 26: Beer Fridays
Taking happy hour to another level, in addition to maintaining it in control budget-wise, many companies are bringing the joyful hour into the office by having a case or two of beer and a few wine accessible beginning at 4 pm on Fridays. Not only is it cheaper, it promotes the mingling that is the objective of company events and it is readily”cut-offable”- once the 24 beers have been gone, happy hour is finished, which cuts down any risk for the company.
Perk 27: On-site Free Yoga/Pilates/Exercise Courses
Many people need some kind of stress relief and everyone requires some exercise these days. Businesses have picked up on this and have started to bring exercise into the workplace. A personal instructor is generally just $50-100/hourwhich makes for a fairly inexpensive perk that direction can help with. I have even seen businesses offer up to 3 classes per week, which can create the foundation of a worker health program.
Perk 28: Free Soda, Sparkling Water, and Tea
Not everyone drinks coffee these days, and businesses have noticed that by providing not just the typical coffee pot but sparkling tea, water, and sodas of all kinds. While this looks small, it can be a massive value add for workers in saving them time and money from visiting the local vending machine or supermarket each time they need something besides water.
Perk 29: Help With Transportation Costs
Some states require companies to provide commuter benefits that help with transportation costs such as bus passes, parking fees and bike maintenance. But even if your location does not need them, if commuting is a price your employees gripe about, consider offering commuter benefits. They are tax free to the worker, and can save hundreds of dollars a year.
Perk 30: Working from Home & Flexible Schedule
With our digitally connected world, operating from home and getting work done through off-peak hours is a lot easier than it was. Not only does this save a company money (less desks = smaller offices = less rent and bills), but it can attract great talent who needs to balance different needs like a household to your staff.
Perk 31: Gain Sharing
A growing number of small businesses are opening up their employees to gain sharing in order to connect them to the business mission and vision, and on the main point. This can be an awesome employee perk as it may really be an amazing add to performance management, while also fattening everyone’s pockets once the business does well.
While worker perks that you could do in your are plentiful, you might want to control it somewhat more or think about outsourcing the program.
6 Employee Perks Companies
If executing good work perks seems a little overwhelming, imagine what? There are third party vendors around who can assist you. Here are 5 good employee perks suppliers:
- Reward Gateway— Reward Gateway is a platform that encircles discounts, rewards, engagement, and also incorporate company insight choices to assess your company’s engagement level.
- Fond— Fond does worker rewards, recognition, and company discounts for your entire team as their perks stage.
- Perks At Function — This company has an intriguing element it adds on the typical rewards and discounts because it also includes programs and trainings by thought leaders as part of the program.
- Badgeville— Badgeville is a gamification firm for worker perks. It is meant for larger companies rather than only has worker perks, but additionally, it has a means to monitor trainings and employee participation.
- YouEarnedIt— Focusing on the employee engagement aspect, YouEarnedIt is a rewards and recognition platform that also concentrates on decreasing employee turnover for companies.
- Zeel— Zeel is an on-demand massage service which can make your workers’ zen in less than 24 hours notice. It is also possible to buy your employees gift certificates also if that is easier.
Over to You
Let us know what work perks you’ve employed as a company owner. We provide more hints in our post on employee recognition. Have you tried something different in your company? Did it work and why or why not? Please share in the comments.
