6 Workplaces That Offer The Best Employee Perks
Employee perks are non-financially based offerings given to employees that extend beyond salaries and benefits (like health insurance, dental plans, retirement, etc.). These perks can have a significant impact on employee recruitment, engagement, and retention. When organizations provide their employees with great perks it increases employee dedication and loyalty. This can mean less employee turnover and churn.
Today, employees want to work for businesses that respect their time and value a healthy work-life balance. They want flexible work options, paid time off, and special job perks. Attracting talent and keeping your employees happy is more challenging than simply offering them a nice salary and a few vacation days.
Types of employee perks
Perks are ways to support employees beyond their standard salary and benefits packages and can include purchasable, programmatic, and environmental perks:
Purchasable employee perks
Purchasable perks include perks that are purchased such as catered meals, books, training resources, fitness vouchers, pet insurance, and student loan forgiveness.
Programmatic employee perks
Programmatic perks are policy-driven advantages to working at an organization including opportunities to work from home, being pet-friendly, offering child care facilities, or implementing Summer Fridays.
Environmental employee perks
Environmental perks are the perks your workspace provides, such as ergonomic office equipment, meditation rooms, living walls, break room facilities, and the overall office design.
Why are employee perks beneficial?
Research shows that 57 percent of people say benefits and perks are among their top considerations when reviewing a job offer. This suggests that perks are an important factor in the employment experience.
Carefully crafted perk programs can be a strategic way to fulfill employee wants and needs, plus they can improve a company’s bottom line. Employee perks are beneficial because they:
· Help to attract, engage, and retain superstar talent
· Make employees happier and more productive
· Reduce absences
· Prevent burnout
· Improve employee health and well-being
· Reinforce and strengthen company purpose, values, and culture
· Increase company loyalty
· Improve employee engagement
· Are a relatively inexpensive way to support employees beyond their salary
Workplaces offering the best employee perks
Below are six companies paving the way for the best employee perks:
1. Asana
The task management and productivity company are well known for giving its employees access to exceptional executive coaching and life coaching services.
Not only does Asana support growth and development in each of its’ employees, but it also promotes a healthy and enjoyable work-life balance. The organization gives all Asana team members a chance to lead a fulfilling life outside of their job by placing an emphasis on passions instead of punching the clock. They provide fitness subsidies, company outings, and commuter benefits.
They also assist working parents by allowing them free time and flexible schedules to tend to family responsibilities.
2. Facebook
Mark Zuckerberg has publicly shared his experience of being a parent over the past few months. His passion for supporting the growth of families extends down to every Facebook employee. He offers his team members a four-month, paid parental leave policy as well as a $4,000 “Baby Cash” bonus for employees with a newborn.
There are also plenty of employee perks for people without children at Facebook, including investments in personal development with career guidance, mentorship programs, a wide variety of quality training, and the flexibility to set personalized work timetables.
Perks even apply to the internships at Facebook with interns reportedly earning more than $7,000 a month, on top of free housing and healthcare coverage. Facebook also offers an arcade full of video games, a wellness allowance, and an onsite barbershop.
3. Netflix
At Netflix, salaried employees can enjoy fully paid, unlimited parental leave. Out of several tech companies, employees of Netflix enjoy the longest parental leave.
The company does not incorporate a standard 8-hour workday. Instead of having employees work strict hours, they are encouraged to work smarter not harder, and are given more free time. This means that they can come back to the workspace and perform better, thus increasing productivity.
Netflix has implemented a “Work, Not Drive” initiative. By partnering with a rideshare service, Netflix gives employees the time to work in the car while they are driven to the office or meetings. It also allows team members more flexibility, as commute time can be converted to working time.
When Netflix employees are at work they are provided with free snacks and lunch.
4. Hubspot
Hubspot employees enjoy unlimited vacation time, flexible work opportunities, and four extra weeks of paid leave for every five years they stay with the company.
Hubspot invests heavily in wellbeing perks which include fitness reimbursement, nutritional consulting, mindfulness training, and stress management. This is in addition to offering healthy snack options in the workplace.
Hubspot invests in its employees’ education by providing tuition reimbursement. Each team member gets an equivalent of $5,000 per year to spend on education. Courses include everything from finance to design and can be studied in semester-long programs, weekend workshops, and online courses.
Hubspot also supports employees with generous parental leave and financial assistance for IVF.
5. Airbnb
Airbnb has plenty of perks to offer employees. One of the most coveted employee perks is a $2000 annual travel stipend. Paid out quarterly, it lets employees stay at any Airbnb listing in the world.
Employees can also enjoy the wonders of the world right in their office: Conference rooms at their Headquarters are each modeled after a popular Airbnb listing—an apartment in Berlin, a loft in SoHo, a lounge in Hong Kong, even a treehouse! Here, they offer perks that make the working day productive and fun, including gourmet breakfasts, lunches, and dinners (free, five days a week) with drinks and snacks available at any time.
In addition to opportunities to work from home with reduced working and flexible hours, Airbnb offers employees a variety of family leave options. These include family medical leave and maternity and paternity leave.
Airbnb also offers company-sponsored tech talks, happy hours, access to Apple equipment, on-site fitness classes, gender-neutral bathrooms, and, best of all, a pet-friendly workplace.
6. Google
Google’s employee perks rank among the greatest in the world. It’s part of the company’s strategy to pull out all the stops and attract the best and brightest talent.
Google provides a long list of impressive perks from celebrity talks to massage credits. They offer a variety of learning, social, and development programs to help employees achieve a healthy work-life balance. Google uses a hybrid work model that gives the majority of its’ employees two work-from-home days every week. The company also offers four “work from anywhere” weeks per year allowing for travel and flexibility.
Free lunches are provided on the company's office campuses. They have various cafes, restaurants, and well-stocked micro kitchens that give free meals to team members. If an employee struggles with culinary skills they can take free cooking classes.
Google also has fitness centers at nearly every office. These gyms provide a variety of activities, including fitness classes, equipment, and swimming pools. For offices that don’t have onsite fitness facilities, Google pays for its employees’ gym memberships.
Not every business will be able to afford employee perks like the ones mentioned above. But, in today’s job market providing an attractive perks package is essential to reducing employee turnover, improving employee engagement, and attracting top talent. Tailor your employee perks to suit your company, and meet the individual needs of your employees at different stages of their careers in your workplace.
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