
Employee Benefits
“Employee loyalty begins with employer loyalty. Your employees should know that if they do the job they were hired to do with a reasonable amount of competence and efficiency, you will support them.” – Harvey Mackay
Designing a reward system for your company is best done at the outset or at least before you have too many employees. The different types of employee benefits and rewards are numerous and some companies offer a mix and match approach, leaving individual staff members to decide what suits their personal circumstances.
A few common employee benefits include:
- Pensions (now mandatory but employers can contribute more as an additional benefit)
- Private Health cover, sometimes for family too.
- Life Insurance
- Extra paid leave
- Flexible working hours (All employees have the legal right to request flexible working once they’ve completed 26 weeks service and employers must deal with requests in a ‘reasonable manner’)
- Childcare support
- Company cars
- Fuel for private use
- Free canteens
- Free or subsidised company products.
The list can go on and on.
It is worth noting though that, as well as the cost of the individual benefit for the employee, every different reward scheme requires management time to administer. Rules change over time and regardless of however many benefits you offer, the employees will always find another one they want!
The purpose of providing employee benefits and a reward structure is to recruit, retain, reward and motivate staff. If a benefit does not achieve any of these, it is not doing its job. We’d always encourage you to seek professional help with staffing matters.
Yorkshire Powerhouse thinking about employee benefits
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