Your employee perks should be valuable to your employees and, by extension, add value to your workplace. This doesn’t mean that they have to cost a lot of money – but they do need to impact employees in a meaningful way.

What are the perks of perks?

If your employees think of your perks as nice-to-haves but not essential, then these aren’t things that add value. Your employees simply won’t care enough, and your efforts will have been for nothing. And perks aren’t about just slapping a few quick ideas together to appease people. The selection of unique workplace perks calls for thoughtful analysis.

How do you know whether the perks that your company provides meet your employees’ needs and make sense for your business? In a CareerBuilder survey released in January 2019, job seekers claimed that benefits and convenience are considered more important than paid compensation. In this study, 75% said that beyond salary, perks are the most important factors they consider when applying to a job.

Those surveyed also indicated that they would choose the following employee perks to make their workplaces more satisfying:

• 42% said half-day Fridays would make them more willing to join or stay at a company
• 23% wanted on-site fitness centers
• 21% desired award trips

So how do you figure out what your employees value so you can offer perks they actually want? We’ll cover this in the next section, along with simple big-business perks you can offer employees without breaking your budget.

Survey your workforce

The best way to understand what your employees consider valuable workplace perks is to ask them directly. Try to figure out what issues they’re facing in their personal or professional life. If you see a trend across many employees, then you can work to address it.

Depending on the size of your workforce, you could interview each person on your team personally, or you could distribute an anonymous online survey. Keep in mind the benefits associated with an anonymous survey:

• Greater likelihood of receiving more honest, objective feedback
• Employees have more time to consider their opinions and issue thoughtful responses
• Possibility of enabling anonymity if desired

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