From childcare vouchers to discounts off high-street stores, offering perks will not only benefit your employees, but your business too.
However, for some reason, many employers are still reluctant to provide sufficient schemes.
A survey conducted by Canada Life Group found that 26% of UK employees don’t receive any employee benefits. Are you one of them?
Continue reading if you’d like to learn the ins and outs of what perks have the biggest impact and why introducing them can save you a lot of money in the process.
1. Staff retention
Perks can offer great value, acting as an incentive for your staff to work harder and push for better results.
In exchange, your business will not only thrive in terms of numbers, but you’ll also create a healthy work environment too.
Plus, these factors will play a vital part in strengthening staff retention rates.
In fact, according to Unum, 66% of employees say that they’d probably choose to stay longer with a business that offered great benefits.
You see, while employment benefits aren’t legally binding, they are a perfect statement of intent, telling your employees that you care about them and their work culture.
Whether it’s a discounted gym membership, company car or team meal every month, these gestures can help eliminate that revolving door culture in your business and ultimately save you money on recruitment.
A great perk for improving staff retention and saving your business money is offering your employees the opportunity to invest a fraction of their wages into a workplace ISA, Share Incentive Plans (SIPs) or Save As You Earn (SAYE).
These schemes give your employees the chance to make more of their money and when your business succeeds, they do too.
This can push employees to go the extra mile to achieve better results and significantly improve the chances of them staying with you for longer as they plan for the future.
And it’s free for you to set up as well.
You can find more information on this by visiting the Money Advice Service.
Recruiter Pro Tip If you have a lower budget to play with, offering smaller employee benefits or perks can work just as well. I’ve included some examples to help get you started:
- Half-day on a Friday – productivity usually drops at this time anyway, so you can make sure your employees focus all their energy on getting results in the morning. Naturally, this isn’t possible for some workplaces like call centres or retail jobs!
- Music takeover – giving your employees the freedom to listen to music while they work can not only help them focus, but create a brilliant work environment too. On a certain day, get everyone to add a song to the playlist and let the jokes commence.
- Beer Friday – if the half-day simply isn’t feasible, ease your employees into the weekend by rewarding them with a beer on a Friday. There’s no better thank you than a refreshing cold one. You could even pair it with a team meeting to discuss the successes from the past five days. Just one of 12 ways you can boost productivity highlighted in our previous post.
2. Reduced taxes
Another perk of employee benefits is the money that you can save on tax, with some kind of salary sacrifice scheme.
By getting employees to part ways with a fraction of their salary in exchange for a non-cash benefit, you’ll be able to save a huge sum of money.
These benefits can include travelcards, car schemes or gym memberships.
As a result, by paying out lower wages, you won’t have to contribute as much tax and National Insurance.
However, it’s worth noting that the government have introduced an income tax to certain salary sacrifice benefits, including company cars and mobile phone contracts.
The remaining tax-free benefits include:
- Ultra-low emission company cars
- Cycling schemes
- Pension saving provided by the employer
- Workplace nurseries
- Childcare vouchers
You can find out more information about the new salary sacrifice legislations by visiting bytestart.co.uk.
3. Easier recruitment
This had to make our list!
By introducing employee benefits and perks, you’ll take a huge step towards the future.
With so many complications in the world we live in, it’s important to offer the flexibility and added incentives to fulfil the specific requirements of every employee.
Workplace benefits and schemes are an integral make or break for many job seekers, so if you look to cover these needs, you should attract better quality candidates.
You should also save a lot of time recruiting as well with 83% of professionals believing that employee benefits make the process easier.
As a result, you can save the money usually required on outsourcing the job to multiple recruiters and find someone twice as quick.
Summary
While employee perks are key to creating a sustainable and healthy workplace environment, they can also offer your business instant and long-term benefits too.
Plus, it’s not a matter of how much you invest in these perks, it’s the fact that you actually offer them in the first place.
Providing a wide range of benefits will increase your chances of appealing to all of your current and new employees.
In turn, this should give you a better chance of retaining staff and saving money on National Insurance contributions.
My tip: ask your employees what they’d like to see in your benefits scheme. You can then go away and come up with a comprehensive package which will serve you for the next couple of years.
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