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Companies seem to tempt employees with more and more interesting benefits these days. Sports packages, bonuses, psychological care, discount cards, development budget - those are only a part of alluring offers you can see in the 2023 job offers.
And it’s great for the well-being of the employees, but also a threat for some firms to be left behind! In this post, you’ll have a chance to peep at the list of 16 interesting perks possible in IT companies and take over some of the best ones.
Work is not just a place to make money
Once upon a time, a long time ago, work was a place where only money mattered. Some people are still stuck in that belief, not yet knowing that it's the easiest way to stop being competitive in the marketplace.
Today's generation of employees knows that work is too big a part of their lives to allow themselves to feel empty and unsatisfied. So, they look for the perfect place. Money?
Of course, it remains one of the most important arguments, but apart from that, the following also count development opportunities, flexible work mode (like hybrid and remote), interesting projects, a team of experts and, of course, employee benefits!
Nowadays, additional benefits offered by an employer to its team are no longer fruits in the office and company gadgets. Employee benefits are a great opportunity to offer candidates something really valuable and interesting.
As many as 78% of employees admit that attractive benefits make them more likely to stay in their current job. However, the question remains, what do you mean by "attractive benefits"?
Everyone is racing to offer the most interesting perks possible, but are they really attractive? Here, we’re presenting the most interesting benefit for 2023 that will allow you to stay ahead of the competition.
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Mental health support
We all know that health is important and that regular check-ups are essential. This awareness has so far focused mainly on bodily ailments, but for the past few years, there has also been a particularly vocal awareness of the importance of taking care of one's mental health.
Your employees will appreciate it if your benefits package includes support for mental health, for example, workshops on work-life balance or psychological services, like therapy.
Childcare
Combining the responsibilities of an employee and a parent is a real challenge, especially when working full-time. For working people, childcare is not an add-on but a necessity, so help from the company will be greatly appreciated by every candidate.
Flexible working hours, subsidized child care or a place in a private nursery close to home or work, where a child can spend his day, playing educational games and developing - all of them are great ways to support your employees with children.
Caring for a pet
Speaking of children... Let's not forget that pets are family members too! It will be a huge asset to your employees if you make it easy for them to care for a pet. Besides, pet-friendly companies always make a good first impression.
Especially since Millennials, the dominant generation of workers, are also the generation with the most pets - as many as 32% of them are caring for a furry friend.
What can you do? There are plenty of interesting solutions! The pet-friendly office is very popular. Pets in the workplace not only help to reduce stress and anxiety, introduce a pleasant atmosphere, but also strengthen relationships between employees, who can play with their colleague's dog during breaks.
Another interesting solution is paid leave to take care of the animal or a few days off after the adoption so that the new pet can adapt peacefully.
Insurance and retirement plans
This may not sound so catchy and attractive but it is an incredibly practical and desirable benefit. Insurance and retirement are the kind of topics everyone knows they should be thinking about.
According to a Fora Financial survey, only 32% of employees are comfortable with the idea of retirement. This shows how much uncertainty there is about securing their funds in old age. If your company offers employees support in this area, you can be sure they will appreciate it.
Tax advice and accounting services
More and more employees are opting for B2B contracts with their workplace. This solution is often the most beneficial, and its popularity is growing especially in the technology industry.
On the formal side, however, it requires much more commitment and decisions from the employee, for example in the form of taxation and completing procedures in the relevant offices.
If you want to give your people something extra that they will enjoy, a great benefit would be tax advice and accounting services available to every employee of your company.
Read also: Happily Ever After, or Why Employee Happiness at Work is the Foundation of a Successful Company?
Happy Hour
You're familiar with the concept of Happy Hour in bars and restaurants - it's a time, usually between 4 pm and 5 pm, when locals give their customers something extra - free drinks or dessert and special prices. It's a great idea that you can take advantage of too!
Organize something special for your employees once a week or once a month. Company massage, a yoga class, a pizza day, an in-office cinema, watching a game or TV series with snacks and drinks, a visit from a professional barista or a wine tasting.
The possibilities are truly endless! Happy hours are a great employee benefit and an opportunity to make your office more enjoyable and creative.
Development support packages
No one goes to work just to perform the same duties and standstill. A company that invests in the development of its people is of great value. And it is not just about empty promises, but about real actions.
It's obvious that by doing interesting projects, employees develop their skills, but it takes more than that to show them that their organization is really investing in them.
Consider launching a development budget - a specific amount of money that employees can spend on things like training, conferences, books or equipment. You could also ask what skills your employees would like to learn and organize courses accordingly.
Volunteering
Helping is great, no doubt about it! You'll certainly find many people in your team who devote their free time to helping others, so it's a great benefit to support these initiatives!
You can organize a volunteering programme within your company, suggest organizations that need support and allocate your employees a certain number of hours that they can spend at a charitable foundation or help center instead of at work.
You can also introduce a scheme to exchange hours spent volunteering for holiday days. For employees, this will be a very attractive benefit of working for your company, and for you, it’s a step towards building a socially engaged company.
Flexible working hours
For quite some time now, the working model in modern companies has become increasingly flexible and tailored to the employee. This trend has become even stronger in connection with the pandemic when many industries have switched to remote mode.
The ability to use the home office is no longer a benefit but is actually the basis. In 2023, to remain an attractive employer you need to go one step further and offer flexible working hours.
Working in the 9 am to 5 pm model is slowly becoming a relic. Some like to start earlier and finish earlier, others prefer to work in the evenings, still, and some may prefer to work 10 hours a day and have Fridays off.
Employees increasingly expect not to have to fit their whole lives around working hours, but for working hours to fit around their lives. Flexible working hours are a great employee benefit to offer.
Team integration
A cohesive team works better, is more motivated, has greater job satisfaction and feels a stronger sense of belonging to the company. Unfortunately, in the whirlwind of everyday tasks, it is often difficult to really get to know the people with whom we spend several hours every day.
A great idea for an employee benefit is therefore an integration budget, which you allocate to each department. Thanks to this, in addition to their daily duties, teams will be able to spend some time bowling, having fun in the escape room or simply spending an evening talking and eating in a cozy restaurant.
Every employee will surely appreciate that the company invests in their nice time and team building.
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Home Office Budget
The home office is the most profitable... for employers. Maintenance costs are lower because employees use their electricity, water and furniture. Everyone quickly gets used to the fact that it is simply the price for working in a robe and slippers…
And this creates a great opportunity to offer your employees a cool benefit. Set up a home office budget that your employees can spend on takeaway food or groceries.
Discounts and vouchers
Imagine your company is an elite club and its members have special discounts, bonuses and opportunities. Sounds cool? Then get to work! Set up a discount program for your employees to enjoy promotions on various purchases and services, for example, concerts, books, travel, electronics, games, streaming platforms and much more.
Gift packs
Corporate gift packs don't have a very good reputation. A pen with a logo that will end up unused at the bottom of your drawer, a shapeless t-shirt in vivid colors that no one will want to wear, a key ring or an ugly mug that looks like thousands of other mugs.
Fortunately, it doesn't have to be this way and gift packs can be a great benefit for your employees. Thermal bottles, Bluetooth speakers, designer or personalized hoodies, acupressure mats, coffee accessories, backpacks, wireless headphones are just some of the ideas.
Medical care
Making appointments with doctors, looking for specialists, and waiting for appointments is always a big inconvenience. That is why private medical care offered by some companies is so popular. Although this benefit is already a standard in most companies, it is still very attractive and expected.
Especially as different packages can be offered, including broader ones offering specialized services. Its value increased even more during the COVID-19 pandemic when access to doctors was difficult.
Knowing that the work offered private medical services to employees and their families gave a great sense of security and reinforced loyalty to a company that cares about its people.
Sports and wellness package
People who use sports packages fall into several groups. Some live with illusions and convince themselves and others that they are really going to start training next month and that a gym card will not just be a decoration in their wallet.
Others use it once in a while - they go to the gym for company or just because they have a burst of motivation to finally change something and start living healthily.
Finally, there are true fanatics, fixated on training, who go to exercise regularly and during a job interview immediately ask if the company offers a gym card. Regardless of which group most of your employees belong to, a sports and wellness package will work great.
Firstly, many such offers include not only gyms but also climbing walls, bike rentals, swimming pools, saunas, massage zones or yoga studios. This allows employees to try various new activities they didn't know about before.
Also read: Virtual mentoring – 9 essential principles you must know
Incentive bonuses
The dissonance between company profits and employee profits is, unfortunately, a common problem in organizations. Imagine this situation - a company brags about its achievements, new clients, further contracts and record profits, while employees who have earned this success get only a verbal "congratulations".
It is hard to be motivated and maintain the same high level of work if the only reward is satisfaction and praise from the boss. This is why incentive bonuses are such a great employee benefit.
Not every company offers them, but those that do can be sure to stand out positively in the market. Christmas bonuses, high-quality performance awards and plaques, or bonuses to be paid upon completion of a challenging project - these are a great way to really appreciate your employees and make them want to do their best.
How to choose benefits for employees in your company
We've presented the most interesting ones here in 2023, but the possibilities are endless. How to choose from so many proposals the best ones for you?
First of all, analyze the situation and possibilities of your company. If you have just made a large investment in the development of your company, for example, the new equipment, expensive benefits can certainly wait for a while.
Secondly, think about what your goal is: do you want to tempt new employees with an attractive offer, or maybe you want to deepen relations with your current employees and build a team that will last for years, maybe you want to build a remote team in which the interests of each employee separately are the most important, or maybe you want your people to have the opportunity to integrate.
Thirdly, remember to take an individual approach. No employee benefit will be perfect for everyone: some people enjoy sports cards and medical care, while others do not. Some will appreciate help with child care, while others will appreciate pet care.
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Some will prefer a bonus to their paycheck more, while others will appreciate the opportunity to grow. If you want benefits to really have value for your employees, let them choose! Also generate a paycheck for tracking the working hours if they feel not appreciated financially.
Conduct a survey and ask them which perk they would appreciate the most. The more different benefits you offer, the greater is the chance that there is something for everyone.
Why are employee benefits important?
A full-time employee spends 40 hours a week at work. That's a lot of time! Daily tasks require commitment, creativity, collaboration, initiative and accuracy. Employees have to invest a lot of their resources to perform their duties to the best of their ability.
So it is not surprising that they expect something in return, some kind of reward and appreciation for their efforts. You will probably think that after all, a salary is a reward for work done.
Well, both yes and no. The salary is a standard part of the contract, an element of exchange - for fulfilling certain responsibilities, the employee receives a certain payment.
However, today's employers don't want the bare minimum but something more to help them stand out in the marketplace. This is understandable, as long as they also expect to have to give something more - attractive employee benefits.
Anyone who feels that the company cares about them and invests in them will want to return the favor!
