Maintaining employee satisfaction is as crucial as nurturing client experience. Your employees are as essential as your clientele in keeping your business alive. Think about it–what is a staffing agency without staff?
With the pandemic hitting the employment market with radical uncertainty, the cries of employees transformed from a few pieces of gold to mountains of perks and unrelenting stability.
In this post, we’ll be taking a look at some of the creative, fun, and quirky ideas employers can do to keep top employees within their company.
9 Unorthodox Benefits That Make and Keep Your Workforce Happy
We used to think that a job is only there for people to put food on their respective tables. But hey, a higher salary isn’t actually the only thing that keeps an employee going – after all.
1. Budgeting and Money Education
Money is what makes the world go round–or more like–what keeps us alive. This is especially true since 12 percent of American employees agreed to have missed work due to financial stress. What’s even worrying is the fact that 22 percent of them said that they saw a substantial decrease in productivity.¹
Employers can help tide the wave for your candidates by offering progressive courses about investment, financial literacy, retirement, or whatever financial pitfall employees run into.
2. Dietary Counseling and Health Support Programs
With health being another form of wealth, employers can also tackle and give this benefit to their adherents. Above all, your staff is your business’s core.
As leaders, you can implement health plans, invite nutritionists for check-ups and consultations, and hold medical and wellness-related programs for your employees.
Healthier employees translate to a lot of favorable things in the office. From everyone having positive moods throughout the day to a dramatic decrease in absenteeism, you’ll notice gradual changes in the setting of your workplace all left on a positive note.
A healthy workforce is a strong force–a force not to be reckoned with!
3. Mental Health Support Programs
You know what they say about our minds being the most important organ in the body and how it’s above all others? Caring for your employees’ well-being won’t make you less of an organization. In fact, it might just be one of the best things you can give your employees.
To put things in perspective, 1 in 4 American workers actually quit their jobs because of poor mental health.² And, about 81 percent of employees said they prefer workplaces with mental health support.³
Besides the fact that your organization will be more favored by candidates, having a mental health program in place will make everyone feel that they are understood and cared for.
4. Professional Mentorship Programs and Opportunities
A lot of employees are continuously looking for ways to earn more. For them, one way to do that is to either improve their current skillset or develop a new one.
You can establish professional developmental events, courses, and mentorship programs for your employees. These can help further their career trajectory, or they can be totally different skills just to help kickstart your staff members’ new journeys!
5. Family-Specific Benefits
Have you ever had an experience when you had to take a needed time off, but you couldn’t because of the lack of family-related benefits? Many employees have–and continue to.
The thing is benefits like paid family leaves can have many positive effects on employee morale, productivity, profitability, and turnover. This allows workers to balance work and family time effectively.
As of today, 100+ countries are paying new mothers 14 weeks+ of paid leaves. These include the United Kingdom, Canada, and Australia. Nonetheless, it will be in the employer’s discretion to provide family-paid leaves or not.
6. Virtual Check-Ups
Think of it like this: your staff’s health is your health, too. Healthy staff means more time to work, more time to work means bigger company growth, and bigger company growth leads to–you know the rest.
Besides medical chat support, telehealth platforms can also be an option, especially if patients need urgent assistance. You can relay this program and let your candidates know that it’s available for them. These services can be anything from check-ups and evaluations to diagnoses, and even one-time or progressive treatments for their conditions.
Easy and accessible medical services can result in lower patient scores for anxiety, depression, emotional trauma, and stress.
7. Flexible Hours
Aren’t you just sick and tired of the same-old “clock-in, clock-out” routine? Apparently, 75% of workers are, especially after experiencing it during the peak of the infamous COVID-19 pandemic.⁴
In a workplace setting, time, in itself, is already pressure. Making a few adjustments wouldn’t hurt, would it? Flexibility doesn’t necessarily mean “do-whatever-you-can-whenever-you-want.” It can be as simple as allowing people to take crucial time-offs like picking their kids up from school or cooking dinner.
8. Travel Perks
Some candidates are avid travelers. They always want to be on the road even when they’re working. And other than paid vacation time, you can also introduce other trip or vacation-related benefits to your employees.
Today, it’s actually widespread that some employers are giving all-expenses-paid trips to their staff. They pay it back in the form of a bond, salary deduction, or more required hours.
Craft a perk that would promote a better and healthier work-life balance and be dumbfounded by the candidates who are going to be willing to stay with you.
9. Pet-Related Benefits
And last but most definitely not least is the benefit for your two or four-legged buddy! Some employers and workplaces have already adapted to a pet-friendly environment, but some haven’t.
These benefits can be as simple as employee discounts for feeds, treats, and grooming, frequent bring-your-pet-to-work days, free training and/or classes, discounted vet check-ups, and more.
Why These Ideas Would Matter the Most to Employers
Most, if not all of these perks have been backed by statistics. This simply means that these ideas came from the employees themselves.
These are the things that made them happy. These are things that helped candidates decide to develop and improve where they are professionally.
The data are already there–no need to reinvent the wheel, OK? After all, you can’t spell work-life balance without “O-K.”
Related Reading: The Psychology of Candidate Decision-Making: What Makes Them Say Yes?
ALLOW ALLLIED INSIGHT TO MAKE YOUR CANDIDATES SAY YES!
Every employee is different. Getting creative with your perks might not be a walk in the park, but it isn’t as demanding as quantum physics, either! If, however, you need assistance in crafting and engineering these for you, our repertoire of skills here at Allied Insight will never be short of what you need.
We go beyond the standard and “traditional” marketing we all once knew! Not that being traditional is bad – but newness in terms of compensation and benefits might be the missing piece to your puzzle. We’ll tackle everything from the depths of your business structure to the outlet of your marketing channels! Give us a call today!
References
1 Castillo, Gil. “Why Including Financial Education in your Wellness Plan Helps Ease Employee Stress.” countrywideppls, https://www.countrywideppls.com/docs/why_including_financial_education_in_your_wellness_plan_helps_ease_employee_stress.pdf. 07 Jul. 2023.
2 Liu, Jennifer. “1 in 4 workers quit their job this year—here’s what companies are getting wrong about retention.” CNBC. 14 Oct. 2021, https://www.cnbc.com/2021/10/14/1-in-4-workers-quit-their-job-this-year-according-to-new-report.html.
3 “Workers appreciate and seek mental health support in the workplace.” APA. https://www.apa.org/pubs/reports/work-well-being/2022-mental-health-support. 07 Jul. 2023.
4 “Working flexibly is now the new normal for employees: Poll.” WEForum. 8 Jul. 2020. https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2020/07/working-flexibly-new-normal-poll/#:~:text=1%20Most%20people%20now%20want%20a%20mix%20of,working%20flexibly.%203%20The%20majority%20of%20bosses%20agree.
