Are you looking for ways to make your team happier and more engaged this year?
In this time, it’s vital to make your team happy so your retention increases and, more importantly, you positively impact the world.
One of the most common ways to positively impact your employees’ happiness is through benefits, also known as perks.
What are the benefits or perks?
Benefits are a set of extra services or money you provide to your employees on top of the compensation and can take many different forms. If you choose the benefits you offer wisely; you can also show your company values through them and, simultaneously, make your employees happier.
Here’s a list of the best benefits you can provide.
Good Health Insurance
One of the most basic needs is having good health and knowing that if any of your teammates get sick, they can quickly and effectively get treatment without worrying about the bill.
How the insurance works, what it covers, and how much it costs varies depending on the country. So it makes sense to match what you offer in your home country with the same amount in others if you have a small company.
Personal development fund
We all like to learn things outside our current job responsibilities. For example, we play an instrument, learn how to knit or draw, take foreign language lessons, etc.
As an employer, if you’re able to support your team with their passions, they’ll feel that their personal needs also matter to you, and overall, they’ll be happier, which is the ultimate goal.
Growth fund
Your company is limited in growth to the knowledge your team has or doesn’t have. Interesting, engaged people want to learn new approaches and improve their work. A growth fund helps with that.
Give each employee an annual budget for growth that can cover conferences, books, online lessons, etc., related to their role. Then, they can spend up to that limit each year.
Gym membership
These days that physical health helps people create and think better. And even more importantly, they’re happier.
With a relatively small amount each month, you can support them go to the gym or doing some physical activity. Your employees could use this budget to buy sports equipment and some running shoes if you wish.
Non-profit workday
Feeling part of a community and helping others is essential to happiness. What if you gave your employees a fully paid day each quarter to spend in a non-profit activity or organization? That is the idea behind this benefit.
It doesn’t significantly impact working days, but it can be cool how your support means that people can help their communities in causes that matter to them.
Generous paid time off (PTO)
When deciding which kind of policy you want to set for taking paid time off, there are many possibilities, but if we want a happy team, they should be able to recharge when needed.
Our recommendation is to set up a generous policy of a high number of days per year (around 25/30), but with a minimum, so your teammates feel a bit more pressured to disconnect from time to time, preventing them from burning out.
Profit-sharing
If your business is flourishing, it’s likely because your team is working well, responsible for their duties, and keeping the company running and growing.
It’s very likely that, in that scenario, the profit has also increased, so it’s a good idea to share a percentage of it with the team so they can feel more engaged and part of the company’s journey. You can decide which percentage precisely, but about 10 to 15% for the employees each year is a great starting point.
Parental leave
Starting a family is hard on its own, and if you add the stress of having a full-time job, the situation is not easy to bear.
By providing a generous parental leave that both moms and dads can use in your company, you’re showing how much you care about the well-being of your employees and their families.
We recommend 10 to 12 weeks of fully paid leave if possible, with the possibility of returning partially at first to smooth the change.
Smaller Gifs or Swag
When people join your company, you can send them a small gift to show how much you appreciate they’ve chosen you instead of other possibilities. This present can be something random like a mug and a notebook, but you can get more creative and send some customized items with your company’s logo.
Childcare assistance
Most parents feel stressed multiple times throughout the week, so having someone there to help can make a massive difference for them. So why not set some budget to help them?
Some offices have a childcare service in the same building, but nowadays, many people work from home, so that’s harder to implement. A good approach would be to help them financially so they can hire childcare assistance if needed. Likely, you can’t cover a full-time person for each employee, but even a tiny amount can help occasionally.
Flexible schedule
Many people appreciate having some flexibility in organizing their working schedules. So, for example, you can have a goal-oriented policy where you don’t need to count hours as long as people meet their goals, this is usually much better and more realistic than trying to count hours, but if you need to, there’s another approach.
You can have a flexible time to get in the office and leave it, so people don’t need to be at 9:00 AM but rather from 8:00 – 10:30, and then they can leave earlier or later than the usual time, depending on when they start.
Coffee / Tea subscription
Many people love the sweet smell of coffee or tea in the morning and love to do a lot of research on the best way to prepare them or the best providers to buy them.
You can cover a coffee or tea subscription up to a specific limit so people can subscribe to their favorite providers.
Good equipment
Good equipment isn’t necessarily a benefit, but going an extra mile here is. When people work from you, especially from home and the office, you can spend the bare minimum on providing them with functional equipment or buying them a piece of equipment they love.
We think it’s important that your teammates like their equipment because they’ll probably be more productive and enjoy more the whole process. Set up a generous budget they can use when they join the company with recommendations of which computers might suit them best and then set some annual budget for more minor things.
Summer hours
In summer, people usually want to go more outside, many parents have their children at home, and life generally gets slower. You can support this natural change by having fewer working hours in the summer.
Summer hours can take different forms, like only working in the mornings on Fridays or even working four days a week for a couple of months, but they can make a huge difference in your employees’ lives.
Sabbaticals
When people have been working in the same company for multiple years, it’s very natural that they want to do something else for a more extended time than just a regular vacation. For example, they might want to take up a more time-consuming hobby, make a long trip, or fully disconnect for quite some time. You can support this by providing a sabbatical policy.
A sabbatical policy doesn’t have to impact your business negatively. A good start can be, after 3 or 5 years, people can take 4 to 6 weeks off, and then you can iterate and adapt depending on your employees’ feedback.
Conclusion
Providing benefits might be the key to making and keeping your employees happy and engaged in your journey. But, even more importantly, benefits or perks can be a great way to positively impact the world, making your employees happier and their families and communities happier.
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