The employees of a company are its backbone. They’re the ones who are crucial to your organization, its overall growth, and future prospects.
You must keep them healthy, happy, and empowered so they can deliver the results you seek. How can you do this? By looking after their well-being. This ensures they’re content, secure, and engaged.
Beyond financial compensation, it’s extremely important to provide your employees with some benefits and perks in salary that align with their wants and needs.
In this article, we’ll discuss the top 10 employee benefits or best HR benefits you can provide for your workforce.
What Are Employee Benefits And Perks?
A compensation package from an employer is more than just a paycheck. It includes benefits and perks as well. Commonly, the two words are used interchangeably. However, they’re quite different.
Employee benefits, or benefits packages, are non-wage compensation that supplements your salary like group health insurance, disability insurance, paid time off, retirement savings plans, etc.
Perks are extra rewards or incentives on top of salary and non-wage compensation that may help you as an employee perform better at your job.
Some examples of employee perks for small business are options for remote working, off-site team-building activities, flexible scheduling, adjustable work hours, a company car to help with the commute, travel discounts for frequent fliers, games in the break room, or gym memberships to promote health.
As you can see perks include a variety of offerings and the list of company perks examples vary from organization to organization.
These additional benefits and perks not only act as an added advantage to attract the crème de la crème of talent, but also provide existing and new hires with financial security, mental well-being, and increased productivity. All this contributes to a healthy company culture - making it a win-win situation!
Why Should Employers Offer Employee Benefits And Perks?
The importance of employee benefits and perks are countless, and each one that comes to your mind is as important as the other.
Did you ever stop to think that employees choose a company that offers them a lower salary package, but a great perks for employees, over organizations that offer a larger salary package, but limited perks and benefits? Well, it’s true!
Good benefits and perks show your employees you care, appreciate their hard work, and are rewarding them. The additional incentives further motivate them to work harder.
If your company offers bigger and better benefits, it will also attract top talents from the industry as well as promote employee retention. Employee health also means less sick leaves, and thus, less absenteeism at work.
This is just the tip of the iceberg. There’s a lot more. The right employee benefits will give you and your organization a bang for your buck!
Top 10 Employee Benefits And Perks
Without further ado, let’s dive in the list of employee benefits and perks. This list consists of some of the most desired employee benefits and awesome company benefits you can offer.
1. Comprehensive Health Insurance
Comprehensive health insurance is an all-inclusive health insurance plan that covers every healthcare solution, from medical consultations to in-patient care, hospital stays, pre and post-hospitalization care, medical testing, and much more!
As the name suggests, comprehensive health insurance has extensive coverage. Offering this as a benefit to your employees ensures financial security for their medical expenses and peace of mind for future healthcare expenses.
A stress-free employee is also naturally more energetic, enthusiastic, and engaged, and thus automatically more productive. If all your employees are at their healthiest, offering their 100 percent and putting in maximum effort, your company will start getting more work done and will result in the overall improvement and growth of the company.
2. Wellness programs
Wellness programs are designed to look after the overall health and wellness of employees. They’re one of the best employee benefits in India you can offer. Employee wellness programs can include multiple things like fitness classes, nutrition sessions, or engaging Zumba classes.
They are fun, interactive, and take care of the wellness needs of your employees. Besides care, they also work as a team building exercise in your company. Moreover, leading a healthier lifestyle will also reduce the risks of chronic lifestyle diseases to a great extent, and thus save the company extra healthcare costs.
It’s also a means to raise the morale and motivation of your employees and a way to help them reach better work-life balance. Providing your employees with these perks shows them you care about their overall wellbeing, and are ready to cater to their different wellness needs.
Loop offers free wellness perks for employees. Click here to know more.
3. Mental health support
Mental health issues continue to haunt a large part of society. Especially with the COVID-19 pandemic, lockdown, and isolation, it is important to extend support, solidarity, and empathy to your employees.
Along with mental health counseling offered in the employee wellness programs, you can offer your employees sick leaves for mental health.
Employee healthcare handbook
A quick and easy-to-read guide for implementing employee benefits that work for you and your organization
4. Maternity care and leaves
Bringing a child into the world is a very rewarding experience, but it’s also a costly affair. Especially as parents, there are a lot of expenses that go into this. With a group health insurance plan, maternity and newborn costs are covered. This helps financially and takes some load off your shoulders.
Besides this, a lot of effort and time is spent in the first couple of weeks and months to take care of the child. Thus, maternity and paternity leaves are an absolute necessity, during which new parents can look after newborns before settling back into their old routine.
5. Period leaves
Menstruation is a monthly ordeal that women have to go through, and it can be quite exhausting, and even painful, to work on all of those days.
It is important to provide your female employees with the option of taking period leaves, shall they need it. It’s certainly one of the best office perks for women, that will set you apart from your competitors.
6. Employee discounts
Employee discounts are one of the company perks for employees you can offer your employees. You can give them employee discounts on the products and/or services that your company offers.
That works as a great incentive and shows your acknowledgment and appreciation for your employees. When employees feel acknowledged, it shows in their work.
7. Pet-friendly office space
If space permits, you can think of making your office into an inclusive space for pets too. In fact, animals help motivate your employees, and keep things lighter and more fun. Many people also have service animals that help them with stress and anxiety.
This move will also help save your employees the anxiety of staying separated from their pets for an extended amount of time.
Check out some Fun Friday Games for employees that will boost engagement and morale!
8. Paid sick days
There are many instances of employees coming to the office sick because they did not want to miss out on that day’s salary. This is a risk for both the sick employees themselves, as well as the others who are exposed to the germs.
Besides, those who are sick will not be able to put in 100 percent into their work. Hence, you must offer paid sick leaves to maintain the sanity of both your employees and your office. It also speaks a lot about the office’s work ethic.
9. Development and training programs
Your workspace can be one where your employees can both contribute their knowledge, and learn something new, too. Your company can host a number of professional development and training programs, where they can indulge in various new concepts and pick up new skills.
It is a win-win situation for both you and your employees because they can then put in their newfound skills to contribute to the growth of your company.
10. Employee appreciation programs
At the end of the day, every individual wants to feel seen, acknowledged, and appreciated for their hard work. Some tokens of appreciation can go a long way to motivate your employees and help them be more productive and engaged.
This can include employee performance bonuses and other incentives or something as simple as a thank you video.
We hope you now have a clear understanding of which benefits perks drive the highest employee satisfaction and engagement.
Unleash Your Workforces Full Potential
Great employees are looking to have great employers. And new age Indian employees know their worth pretty well and will not settle for less than what they think they deserve. Furthermore, they’re looking beyond money and into opportunities to upskill or something that personally benefits them.
As a business, if you’re looking to get the most out of your employees, you must provide them with high-value and quality wellness programs that support them both inside and outside of the workplace.
So if you are asking yourself, why should I invest in employee benefits programs. The answer is simple - companies with the best benefits and perks reward employees and prioritize their well-being. Employees appreciate your efforts, and put in extra effort into their work, plain and simple!
FAQs
1. What are the trending employee benefits in 2023?
- Health insurance: Offering health insurance to employees is a typical perk that aids in covering medical costs.
- Paid time off: Offering paid time off to employees in the form of vacation days and sick days might aid them in striking a healthy work-life balance.
- Flexible scheduling: A nice benefit could be enabling employees to have flexible schedules, such as the ability to work remotely or with a shortened workweek.
- Employee assistance programs: Employee assistance programs provide resources for the mental and physical health of employees, such as access to gym memberships or counselling.
