A lot gets said about the potentially great advantages to a company of employee benefits – and quite rightly, too. After all, they can be a great way of making life a little easier, richer and more interesting for your new and established workers alike.
But if you’re trying to entice someone to your firm, there are certain popular benefits that you might live to forget offering. Here are just a few of them.
Unlimited holiday
This is a benefit that has come to be seen as a golden bullet in recent years – but unfortunately, it’s also one that frequently fails to work as well as intended.
Simple human nature is largely to blame for this. It’s the kind of policy that can lead too many of your workers to take the equivalent of a week off every month. Alternatively, some other employees of yours may be too paranoid to ever take time off at all.
Discount schemes that only you benefit from
Giving your employees a discount on the goods that your company sells is perfectly reasonable as far as benefits go. However, it works better as a benefit for certain firms than others.
If your company makes consumer goods such as electronics or clothing, your employees might well appreciate the significant amount of money off.
But if you’re only offering discounts on things that your employees are unlikely to ever want, it might feel less like an employee benefit, and more like ‘just another’ attempt by your company to create a revenue stream.
A hip, but not very practical office
Yes, your office space might be eye-catching and ‘cool’, with a maze-like layout and bright colours. But does all of that effort make your workforce a better place for employees to spend their ‘9 to 5’?
In the ‘real world’, you might find that those fashionable benches are too narrow for anyone to comfortably sit on, while that ‘open plan’ area may not be the liking of employees who would prefer privacy.
Always think carefully about these mundane practical matters whenever you have an office designed, built or refurbished.
‘Always on’ technology
We may all like to feel ‘plugged in’ these days so that we always know what’s going on, but giving your workers a ‘tech allowance’ for such things as smartphones and tablets can also have a bad side.
If your employees know that their employer has paid for their phone, they might feel obliged to use it even outside working hours. That’s not a pressure you’ll necessarily want to put on your staff.
An ‘all play, no work’ ethos
Some employers want their workers to enjoy themselves so much in the office, that they won’t feel like they’re working at all. To this end, they might set up ping-pong tables, plenty of breakout areas and maybe even toys and gadgets for their employees to use throughout the working day.
Such an ‘all fun, all the time’ atmosphere may attract the attention of younger candidates. However, it could also give your workplace an overly casual feel that doesn’t lend itself well to productivity or wider business development.
Thankfully, it’s perfectly possible to formulate benefits that will make your new workers feel both engaged and rewarded, in the process bringing real advantages for your company. Talk to the Webrecruit team today about how we can assist in fine-tuning your managed recruitment approach.
