Employee Benefit Ideas
Private chef. Pet insurance. Fully paid sabbatical years. Sounds good doesn’t it?
When it comes to employee benefits and advantages, companies are doing their best to get more and more, and with good reason.
Defining a strategy that promotes well-being for all is the mission that companies currently have to motivate and retain their employees. Therefore, they should seek a broader approach that includes all areas of wellness in their benefits pack: financial wellness (which includes financial education), physical wellness (physical activity program with different plans), emotional wellness ( specialized employee care and mental health programs) and social well-being (teamwork, corporate volunteering, among others).
Today, there is a wide range of benefits and advantages that can be adapted to the needs of your staff. To help you choose the best ones, we’ve developed 100 ideas that appeal to a diverse and multi-generational workforce.
Financial well-being
- Contribution of the company to the pension plan: the company allocates an amount of money annually to the pension plans of its workers, as additional compensation for their services/jobs. In this case, said remuneration must be reflected in the worker’s payroll and must be paid for it.
- Student Loan Repayment Plans – This initiative can make a big difference by establishing a student loan repayment program for your employees.
- Discounts on travel + carpooling: More than three-quarters of employees make trips to work alone. Commuting carries significant expense and stress: It takes some of the financial pressure out of group mediclaim policy for employees commuting and begins offering to carpool.
- Company car: this is a benefit that you can offer your workers to satisfy specific mobility needs within the framework of their job responsibilities or to include it in the employee’s annual remuneration, even if the employee does not need to travel by car for reasons of job.
- Discounted Family Phone Plans for Families: Today it is impossible to live without cell phones or smartphones. So that your employees and their families can stay in touch, offer them a discounted mobile family plan.
- Tuition Reimbursement: Invest in your employees by giving them the opportunity to earn a specialized/advanced degree (such as an MBA). Often this benefit includes a contract that requires the employee to stay with your company for a certain number of years after graduation.
- Professional Development Fund: Reserve a continuing education fee to give your employees the opportunity to renew their knowledge.
- Completely free accommodation: Can you imagine living next to the same building where you work? Offer your employees this possibility and they will not have to spend on transportation.
- Pet Insurance: People love their pets, but they know that care is important and that they have to invest in it. So companies can help by providing pet insurance to keep them happy and healthy.
- Childcare Reimbursement: It is a difficult choice for many parents: do I stay home with the kids or work and leave them in daycare? Reimbursement for this service can help your workers give them the peace of mind that their children are attended by professionals while they are in the office.
- Remuneration in education and child care: parents generally spend a large part of their salary on the care and education of their children. This type of benefit means that they have help from the company for these types of expenses.
- Restaurant Tickets: This is a great reward that is offered through tickets that employees can use for lunch or dinner at different establishments. Who does not like to eat out someday with colleagues?
- Flexible compensation card: with compensation in kind, employees earn more earning the same, since a part of their annual gross salary is used to pay for routine expenses, such as transportation or the daily menu in a restaurant. In short, the annual net salary increases and this makes workers happier.
- Employee Awards Catalog: An Employee Awards Catalog offers unique bonuses, which can range from vacation or leisure to experiences or awards based on performance.
- Employee Referral Program: Streamline hiring by incentivizing your employees to refer the best talent they know to join your organization.
- Financial Education Program – Helps employees and their families reach their financial goals, whether it’s saving for a new car or paying for their children’s college tuition.
- Employee Savings Program: In addition to the more traditional wellness benefits, employee rewards programs help employees save on things like technology, food, and clothing.
- Refund on Technology Products / Services – Top-of-the-line laptop. Multiple monitors. High-speed internet connection. The purchase of technology can be a significant personal expense, betting on technological reimbursement can be a great compliment.
- Investment Programs – Help employees create capital with smart investment programs. Computershare, for example, is a fractional ownership program that allows employees to buy high-value stocks that they didn’t have access to before.
- Fuel reimbursement: in large cities the average car ride from home to the office is 26.1 minutes. This tour twice a day means a lot of money out of the pocket of your employees weekly. Fuel reimbursement programs can lessen the financial and psychological stress of commuting.
- Free Parking Space: The worst part of driving (especially in a city) is finding parking. It is usually a costly and time-consuming inconvenience. Free parking by the company is a benefit that saves the employee time and expense.
- Free Car Cleaning Service: Imagine how happy your workers will be when they leave work and see their cars sparkling and clean.
- Diaper + wipe subscription: A new baby can spend an average of 2,700 diapers in a year, reaching around € 500. And that’s just diapers. This subscription can help families save on these expenses.
- Help Buying a Home: On the list of important milestones for adults, buying your first home is among the top choices. If the company can help with this important decision, it is a plus.
- Summer camp for employees’ children: children need fun at all hours, and more in summer. Therefore, it is a good bet for the company to offer these holidays for the children of the employees.
- Retirement Planning: For some, retirement is a long way away, for others, it is just around the corner. Whatever the situation, no one wants to retire with uncertainty. Planning can help your employees start a smart and sustainable strategy.
- Egg Freezing: More and more women are choosing to focus on their careers when they are young, and leave motherhood for when they are more adult. Egg freezing is a method that allows women to preserve their reproductive potential for the future.
- Birth fund: Has your employee had a baby? Helping her financially to receive a new family member is a great gift.
- Clothing accessories: Both Steve Jobs and Barack Obama expressed that “brain power should not be wasted in deciding what to wear when other important decisions have to be made.” To make life easier for your employees, giving them company-branded clothing is a great idea.
Physical and mental well-being
- Varied classes and activities: Active employees are more committed employees. By offering employees a variety of activity options, they will be happier and healthier. Gympass is a platform that offers a network of more than 50,000 sports centers and boutiques in 14 countries around the world.
- Wellness Reimbursement: Reimburse your employees for achieving certain health goals, like taking 10,000 steps a day or visiting a gym 3 times a week.
- Office gym: Active employees have higher productivity periods. Having sports facilities in or near the office offers employees the ease of exercising without having to leave their work area.
- Health and wellness center at your fingertips: Do you need to speak to a specialist about some health problems? Or with a nurse to check if the tests are ok? Having medical assistance in the office helps employees save time and improve health.
- Free Flu Vaccines – Free flu vaccines not only keep the entire workforce healthy but also help protect your employees and their families from a viral illness.
- Treadmills Workspaces – Some people can’t sit still, they’re more active. Having a treadmill handy in your workspace can eliminate stress and increase productivity. Instead of sitting for hours, your workers can get on a treadmill and get moving.
- Fitness reimbursement plan: reach fitness goals or get rewards thanks to technology like FitBit, companies are giving employees incentives to stay healthy, from paying the gym fee to meeting daily goals of meeting daily steps established.
- Screen savers: Daily exposure to blue light from looking at screens can cause vision problems, migraines, and a host of other problems. A screen protector, like the EyeJust blue-light-blocking protector, is a quick and easy solution to mitigate eye strain.
- Inclusive health care benefits for transgender people: One of the key aspects of a successful health benefits program is inclusion. Transgender employees may have medical expenses that are not covered by some insurance companies. Offering health plans with inclusive benefits for people who want to start the process can help reduce the costs and stress of going to the doctor.
- Discount coupons for physiotherapy, osteopathy, and chiro massage: back pain is something that affects most employees, due to stress and poor posture. Such a benefit will help your employees develop good posture habits and feel better.
- In Vitro Fertility Treatment Grant: For employees who want children but are having trouble conceiving, in vitro fertility is an excellent option (if they can afford it). Fertility treatments can cost more than € 5,000. Offering help for this type of treatment can mean a lot to your workers.
- Lactation rooms with medical attention: expressing breast milk (especially at work) is exhausting. A proper lactation room gives new mothers the equipment and privacy they need.
- Regular Analysis: Taking biometric measurements of your employees, such as blood pressure, height, weight, and cholesterol, can help them be aware and monitor their overall health.
- Senior care services: Families with elderly parents and relatives often face very high budgets and situations for home care. Removing the financial burden from these situations can help ease the transition.
- Benefits of starting a family: a birth is a joy for everyone but at the same time it is an incredible amount of work, especially when you have to balance work and home with taking care of the baby. Improving benefits to help your employees build their new family environment is a big step.
- Walk to work program: reduce your carbon footprint. Earn rewards from your employees by encouraging them to be healthier. Why not reward your employees for walking to work?
- Designated Parking for Pregnant Women: Pregnant women have a long list of new problems to tackle, including: adapted places for their last months of pregnancy. Getting them to park near the entrance of the office is a small gesture that will make their day to day easier.
- Massages in the office: a relaxing massage is always a pleasure to reduce stress and help your workers to be more relaxed. Even if it’s only once a quarter, this reward may be just what they need.
Emotional well-being
- Additional days of leave for the death of a family member: the loss of a loved one has not only a severe emotional cost, but also a financial one. Having the necessary rest time (additional paid days) after a close loss is essential in all companies. Offering some extra days than those established by law is a good gesture.
- Mental health and stress management workshops: 40% of employees feel that their companies are extremely stressful and do nothing to remedy it, according to Woolax’s latest report on job stress. Interactive workshops can help your business find healthier ways to strike a balance between work and life.
- Free subscriptions to mental health apps: Mental health apps allow your employees to take control of their well-being with accessible options like texting and video chatting with licensed therapists.
- Mindfulness App / Facilities: stress is one of the most common problems among all employees. A subscription to a relaxation techniques app along with a meditation room in the office can help you demonstrate a greater commitment to employees’ mental health.
- Employee Assistance Programs (SAPs): SAPs can help your staff with a wide range of problems, from psychological disorders and substance abuse to stress and emotional well-being. ECPs also offers short-term counseling to establish strategies for long-term wellness treatments.
- Sleep capsules in the office: a 40-minute nap can increase work performance by 34%. Who would not like to be able to sleep after lunch? Sleeping capsules are a very valuable investment for companies and their employees.
- Mental Health Days: Companies often offer employees a set number of sick leave days, but what about mental health days? Mental health is as important as physical health and should be treated as such.
- Days to “get out of the comfort zone”: sometimes leaving the comfort zone is worth it to live new experiences, offering your employees a budget to try (at least once a quarter), is an action with great value.
- Remote Work Program: Maybe your employee wants to spend a year in Sri Lanka, Japan or return to their hometown. Why curb your dreams? Implement a remote work project so that all parties benefit.
- Travel discounts: help your employees choose their vacations by giving them travel benefits or offering them an annual budget to go out, see and see the world.
- Pet Grooming Permit: Does Employee Have New Kitten Or Puppy? The pet care permit gives employees up to a week off to organize everything for their new friend and/or family member.
- Daycare in the Office: Subsidizing daycare for your employees’ children is great, but having a daycare in the office means that your employees are physically much closer to their children and save more time. In addition, it could also save your company money as it would cover childcare for multiple employees.
- Help and assistance for adoption: The adoption process can take more than a year to reach the final yes. It is a long process and with a lot of complicated documentation, intense interviews, and certain frustrations. Adoptive assistance can help aspiring parents navigate this difficult process.
- A travel companion for new mothers: New mothers need support where they can get it, especially while breastfeeding. A family member, a babysitter, or anyone accompanying a new mother and baby on a business trip is a great help.
- Complimentary Breast Milk Delivery – This courtesy service allows women to send their breast milk home for free.
- Programs to return to the work routine: going from being with the baby for 24 hours to quickly moving to full-time work is not always the smoothest transition. Smooth out the process with a parent acceleration program.
- Assistance for gender reassignment: The gender reassignment process is a complex journey. As a company, you can facilitate the process by offering financial, legal, medical, and emotional support.
Social welfare
- Ticket or cultural card: Art. Music. Theater. Literature. Dance. Give your employees free access to the best cultural experiences in the city.
- Invitations to Private Movie Aces: Sometimes we all need to chill out with a good movie and some popcorn at the theater, but it is in a private session – so much the better!
- Reading Club: Creating an internal reading group is a great way to promote learning, communication, and teamwork.
- In-house mentoring/mentoring program: All employees (but especially young and new employees) can benefit from having a guide to help them navigate within their career landscape.
- Specific Certificates / Titles: Paid certificates or titles are essential for employee retention. It is a way to motivate employees with specific training and benefit as a company to create a more trained team.
- Prejudice + Diversity Course: We all need to be respectful of each other. Diversity classes can help your employees gain valuable insight into their conscious and unconscious behavior.
- College Coach Program: Helps employees learn about the college admissions process and funding process for their children by giving them access to a coaching program.
- LGBT Awareness Training: Like diversity training, kindness and understanding are essential in the workplace, education and awareness can help foster acceptance and inclusion.
- Charitable Donations – Supports social causes and charities, and establishes a mission and culture of helping others in the office to achieve the goals related to these organizations.
- Volunteer Opportunities in the Office – Whether it’s a tutoring program or a web-cam virtual class, there are countless volunteer opportunities where you can help on-site.
- Volunteer opportunities outside the office: Try to get your employees involved with a cause by offering them information on how to join volunteer groups for social and environmental supports.
- Extra vacation days for charities – Your employees are busy. Maybe they want to volunteer but can’t find the time. Offering special days off for charity work can give them the time (and incentive) to volunteer or do other things.
- Monthly team activities: Do you want to form stronger bonds between your employees? Involve them in non-work team activities to help them get to know each other outside of the office.
- Unlimited Vacations: More and more companies are offering unlimited vacation time. Focusing on getting the job done efficiently, rather than being in the office when there’s nothing to do, can have a powerful effect on the focus, productivity, and overall well-being of your employees.
- Telework Friday: Everyone knows that Friday is the most motivating day of the week. Working from home on Fridays and having fewer meetings can mean time to focus on complex projects, prepare reports, or organize next week.
- Lunchtime Talks: Everyone must meet at lunchtime. Why not offer a more experimental lunch with a talk on leadership? It is a great way to keep employees engaged in their break time.
- Summer Friday – Half-Day: When summer comes, employees will want to get out and enjoy the good weather. Establishing a reduced working day every Friday in summer will allow them more flexibility to enjoy their free time.
- Free day of birthday: that they give you a cake in the office on your birthday is nice but, spending the day doing what you want and getting paid is even better. The day off your birthday is a very valuable benefit that shows your employees how much you appreciate them.
- Paid sabbatical periods: worker exhaustion is real. If you want to retain employees, sometimes you have to let them spend time discovering their passions, such as teaching yoga as a volunteer in another country, studying another career, or trying another type of job. Sabbatical periods have been shown to decrease stress and increase life satisfaction.
- Flexible and free hours: like unlimited vacations, if your company believes that “doing the job” does not strictly need a schedule, you can offer flexible hours. Giving employees the opportunity and freedom to work when they are most productive will reduce stress and increase job satisfaction.
- 4-day work week: Studies show that working one day less per week increases worker productivity by 40%, a 4-day work week allows employees to focus more while they work and take more time to relax and rest when not They are.
- Part-Time Parenting Program: Allowing parents to pick up a part-time schedule so they can enjoy their children is a great way to keep them happy and increase retention.
- “Casual” dress code: Offering your employees the opportunity to wear light clothing on a daily basis makes them feel happier and more comfortable during their hours at the office.
- Implant Program: Offers airline, train, and accommodation tickets for an employee and a guest to visit the office of another company and offer their experience there for a week. It is a great way to learn from other teams, develop new skills, and even practice different languages.
- Game rooms: Do you want to play table football? Table tennis? A game room is an excellent social outlet to reduce stress in any office.
- External Team Meetings – This is a good opportunity to allow employees to clear their work environment for a day or a week and to have meaningful discussions about the organization’s strategy and future with other teams.
- Costume Day: It will seem silly. But dressing up for Halloween or carnival can bring intangible fun to the workplace, especially if there are prizes for the best costumes.
- “Pet Friendly” Day: As long as you get the go-ahead from any allergic employee, bringing your pet to work can be a fun way to see your employees’ pets and offer them the opportunity to work alongside you.
- Exchange with other teams: send your employees to join another team within your company for a day or a week. This will not only serve as a platform for learning new skills but will also provide them with valuable insight into the corporate structure and operations of a completely different team.
- Family Welcome Day: It is an excellent exercise in building relationships between co-workers and families. In addition, employees’ children can see where their parents work and establish a friendly relationship with each other.
- Children’s parties: there is nothing like renting a venue to organize an exclusive party for the employees. But it would also be fun to be able to invite the employee’s family. Thus, it is highly likely that there will be better participation and more connection in all areas.
- Barista or Cafeteria in the Office: Employees can spend a lot of time outside of the office for a coffee or to unwind. Having a coffee shop or barista in the office will not only be a pleasure for your wallets; It will also save you time.
- Ready Meals and Snacks: Just like having a coffee shop in the office is good, the option of having ready meals for lunch means convenience, savings, and carefreeness.
- Free drinks after 6 pm: A snack after a long day of work can be a much-needed to open new ties during happy hour.
- Free Food Delivery: To save your employees time picking up their food, offering free food delivery is a plus. The company can cover expenses so they can spend more productive time.
- Delivery of purchases or orders: when you work from nine to six (or seven), there is not much time left to go shopping. The possibility of delivery of purchases or orders in the office can be a great advantage for your employees to earn on time.