Employee benefits

Do your company employee benefits help to attract candidates to your business? It’s not only the salary that makes a candidate apply for a role, since the pandemic people want more and are looking for a variety of different benefits to enhance their lifestyle before they take a role.

Offering employee benefits for a healthy work life balance

It has been recognised that hybrid/flexible working – a combination of working from home, working in the office and amending working hours – is an employee benefit candidates are increasingly looking for but employers must consider whether in practice, offering flexible or hybrid working, does actually enable the employee to achieve the desired balance between work and personal life.

Will the employee still have time for friends and family, enough time to eat healthily, to exercise, rest and sleep well and be able to switch off from work whilst working from home or in the office? If the answer is no, then further thought needs to be given to provide a better solution.

What can employers do?

To ensure that employees feel supported there are a variety of strategies which can be implemented: 

• Ask your employees what they think can be done to achieve a good work life balance and see whether these ideas can be used. Encourage a culture where employees are open with their managers and can raise issues. It is important that employees feel listened to, their views considered and time given to follow up conversations, even if the outcome isn’t always what the employee wants to hear.
•  Give your managers the right training so that they are able to spot stress indicators and can understand how to help individuals. If a hybrid working arrangement is in place, make sure that the managers are able to give employees clear details of what is expected and when; make sure that breaks are happening, annual leave is being used and check in on your home working colleagues for a social chat when you can. Managers should review workloads so as their colleagues aren’t over worked or overwhelmed.
• Now that the restrictions are lifting, get some social activities scheduled in to build team morale. These don’t have to be expensive but ask the teams what they like, and you may be surprised.

Benefits package

As an HR consultancy, PSHR is often tasked with what can be offered to employees in addition to pay and the usual pension and annual leave benefits. 

Enhancing the pension and annual leave offer to higher than the statutory minimum is a really good start. 20 days annual leave (plus bank holidays) is seen to be low with candidates holding out for 25 – 30 days plus bank holidays per year. Some businesses agree that annual leave can be bought, and we work with some companies that offer their more senior employees unlimited annual leave albeit they do still need to get the job done and achieve their KPI’s!

Sabbaticals could be offered to allow employees a longer break to go travelling or spend time volunteering, knowing that they would come back to their job without any break in employment.

In order to support employee health and wellbeing, medical health insurance is a very common benefit. These schemes now come with additional options in relation to mental health and wellbeing support and Employee Assistance Programmes more commonly available.

When thinking about other benefits that can be used, businesses should think about their employees and what would mean more to them. These could include:

If your business needs HR help, HR resources or HR advice and guidance give #TeamPSHR a call on 01473 653000 or email hello@pshumanresources.co.uk for your FREE 30-minute HR consultation.  Our CIPD qualified consultants can work with your team to pull together a benefits package tailor made to suit your employees and budget.