Top Ten Perks at Work

Written by Calvin Bowers
Author

Sometimes in workplaces, there isn’t enough money to fund the level of pay rises that everyone would like to see, so employers have to do what they can to keep their staff happy in other ways and some of these include perks at work.

These perks can differ wildly by organisation. Google for example offers all employees the chance to eat for free on their campus and set their own hours. This means that if you work for Google you may never have to buy your own food. Think of the financial uplift that could give you if you never had to shop for food and the time that would be freed up with meal planning and preparation etc. To counterbalance the fitness aspect of this, they also offer generous fitness facilities on-site and free to use as well. 

In terms of perks at work, how does their fellow Silicon Valley giant Apple deal with perks? Not all that well, apparently. They have demanded that all of their employees come back to the office to work, rather than working from home. This seems at odds with what they were signalling nearer the start of the pandemic and some employees had even moved to other US states, thinking remote work would continue at the company for the foreseeable future. 

This forced return has caused ructions within the company and many staff have apparently left. A clear example of how top-down demands for compliance are vastly inferior to offering quality perks. We look at the top ten perks at work below:

1. Flexible Working Hours and Location  

Flexible working is simply the biggest perk that people are looking for at the moment. Their expectations surrounding remote work and flexible hours have been raised significantly because of the prevalence of working from home during the Covid-19 pandemic, and the success that was made of it. 

2. Workations and Remote Years

The opportunity to take a paid workation or a remote year is something that would be considered an excellent perk by many employees. The idea of a remote year is that you spend it with other remote workers in different cities around the world, broadening your horizons and helping each other with upskilling and improving. A workation is a cross between work and a vacation but you don’t have to take any time off work to go. 

3. Employee Recognition Programme

It can be a good way to tie in the efforts of your remote and in-house teams to run an employee recognition programme which takes into account the hard work and accomplishments of people across the company. This helps with team cohesion and assists in building a healthy work culture.

4. Employee Wellness Programme

This is a simple but effective way to show that the company cares about the health and wellbeing of their employees. This can include short term daily step contests for those who wish to participate as well as things like massages and yoga classes. This is easier to do when employees are all on-site but vouchers can be offered for the massages etc for those who are based remotely. 

5. Increase the Quality of Food Offered Onsite

Most employees consume one or more meal a day on-site at work so it is worth looking at the quality of food that is on offer in their workplace. Are you offering vending machines, which are contributing to poor diet, or do you have the capacity to provide nutritious meals? This can make a real difference to the health and wellbeing of workers, as can how they are priced. Offering cost-price or even free food and drink is an extremely valuable perk and one that will be widely appreciated by the staff. 

6. Employee Development Plans

It is a good feeling to be valued by your employer and having an employee development plan can help to prepare you for the next step in your career progression within the company. It will enable you to look at how you are progressing alongside certain metrics that are relevant to your work and also help you to gauge when to ask for a pay rise. Having a good employee development plan can also help to assuage any self-doubts that you have in the workplace. 

7. Childcare Assistance Programme

One of the major barriers that are faced by parents in the workplace are exorbitant childcare costs. Putting in place a childcare assistance programme will allow the company to assist the parents who work for them with vouchers or direct financial assistance toward childcare. This can be a hugely significant perk for many and will earn a lot of good will from employees. 

8. Useful Employee Discounts and Rewards

There are many employee reward schemes that are easy to plug into and these can be used to offer useful discounts and rewards to your employees. It is important to pick one that offers rewards that your employees are likely to find useful, so try to ensure you have consulted some employees to find out what they would like from a rewards scheme.

9. Team Days Out and Activities

It can be great to have the chance to leave the office and do something fun with work colleagues. Team days out and activities always seem to appear on the ask list when it comes to perks at work. There are many popular activities including paintball, escape rooms or classes in cooking or improvisation. The options are practically limitless but will ensure good team bonding and will be discussed for a long time afterward. 

10. Birthday Holiday From Work

This is one of the most desired employee perks, being allowed to have your birthday off work as an extra holiday that doesn’t eat into your vacation time. Nobody should have to work hard on their birthday so this is a perk that would be appreciated by a substantial number of employees. It is a nice touch that says you care about your employees and want them to make the most of their birthday, allowing them to spend the full day with family and friends. 

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