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25 Jun 2019

The essential everyday benefits that will have a huge impact on employees' lives

Businesses that want to attract and retain the best talent, will inevitably have a benefits and reward package in order to boost their Employee Value Proposition. As a result, it’s important that these are relevant and have a real impact on your employees in order to set you apart from your competitors.

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So, how do you deliver benefits and rewards that will have true meaning and value to your employees? Providing benefits and rewards for everyday use and with broad appeal is one effective way to ensure great engagement and maximum impact. 

It’s useful to think about a typical day in the life of any individual. What are the kinds of things we all do? For example, we eat, drink, travel and we spend money on various essential and non-essential items. The other key question to ask is: what do people do in their spare time, when they’re not at work? Some people play a sport or go to the gym, while other people like to socialise with friends and go out for dinner. By keeping this information in mind, you can tailor your employee engagement strategy to meet the everyday needs of your employees. 

To give you some guidance, we’ve outlined a few examples of benefits and rewards for everyday life that will make a real difference to your employees. These have been split into: money-saving opportunities, free access to resources and reward & recognition.

Money-saving opportunities

  • Food and drink
    To refer to Maslow’s hierarchy of needs (see below diagram), food and drink are ‘physiological needs’. In other words, they are biological requirements. We all need food and drink to survive, so providing your employees with benefits that makes their acquisition of food and drink easier is likely to be of interest, have an impact, and get a great response. 

    Providing discounts and/or cashback opportunities for big name supermarkets is a fantastic way to give your employees the chance to save money every single day. By using a reloadable gift card that gives a percentage cashback on money spent at the supermarket, your employees could accrue a considerable sum of savings in a short period of time. This money could then get spent on other things, which means that you’re essentially enhancing your employees’ disposable income – an everyday benefit that really does make a difference to the lives of all your employees.  

  • Travel
    Travel is an integral part of most employees’ working week. The daily commute to work can put a strain on everyone’s finances and it certainly adds up, so why not offer a benefit that will ease your employees’ expenditure?

    At peoplevalue, we have a Fuel Card that allows employees to make savings of up to 25p per litre at over 1,200 BP fuel stations across the UK. When employees get their card, they can significantly reduce the cost of their travel to and from work and on personal mileage too. 

    You could also start a Cycle to Work scheme or give employees the opportunity to save money on train tickets, for example. Whatever you decide, remember that travel will be a part of your employees’ daily routine no matter what their roles are, so it makes sense to increase the value of your benefits by aligning them to this point. 

  • Leisure
    With busy lives outside of work, there are plenty of activities employees will be enjoying in their spare time. So, how can you help them save money? 

    Activities could include meals out, trips to the cinema, fun days out for the kids, DIY, gardening or a simple dose of retail therapy. As a result, if your benefits include money-saving features for a variety of leisure activities, your employees will be able to use them for things they genuinely enjoy day-to-day. 

Free access to resources

  • Health and wellbeing
    It goes without saying, but our health is important. It’s something that we should be looking after every single day. As an employer, it’s important to support your employees’ health and more specifically, their wellbeing. With this in mind, benefits that allow your employees to maintain and improve their wellbeing will, of course, have a real impact on their lives and be relevant for everyday use. 

    To give you some examples you could provide your employees with free access to helpful resources such as an advice centre, a wellbeing assessment, fitness plans, instant relaxation tips and much more. 

    Having wellbeing resources as part of your wider benefits programme means that whenever your employees need a bit of support, they can log in and find something useful to help them. This, of course, should be used as an added bonus in conjunction with your own personal support.

Reward and recognition
To go back to Maslow’s motivational theory that we mentioned earlier, there are other types of human requirements in his hierarchy that, when harnessed, can be used every day as a valuable motivator and should therefore play a big part in your benefits package. A successful reward and recognition scheme will help meet employees’ ‘Belongingness and love’ and ‘Esteem’ needs.

  • Workplace culture and relationships
    ‘Belongingness and love needs’ are also strong human motivators. For example, we all desire friendship, trust, acceptance and like to receive and give praise. In the workplace, this translates into having positive relationships with our colleagues and feeling like an accepted and valued part of a team. So, a real key benefit for everyday use in any business is a recognition scheme. 

    Having a culture of recognition supports a positive, open and cohesive community within your workforce. It allows your employees to express their appreciation of each other and to feel valued when they do a good job; a really powerful tool that should be facilitated by a good social recognition scheme. 

    For example, using ereward, employees can say “thank you” and “well done” to their colleagues every single day. This instant recognition is made visible company-wide via a social wall and therefore significantly connects different branches of the business, collectively enhancing relationships between employees and reinforcing a positive company culture. 

  • Employee esteem
    Another benefit you can integrate into your employees’ daily routine, and your own, is a reward scheme. This can be used for a multitude of purposes such as Long Service Awards, sales/target incentives and driving core company values across a business. 

    This feeds into Maslow’s ‘Esteem needs’ from his hierarchy which implies that the desire to achieve is a powerful motivator for us all. While this is less of an ‘everyday’ benefit to your employees, because they can’t expect to receive a reward every single day, a reward scheme should certainly be integrated into the everyday culture of your business. 

    Depending on the size of your business, there’s no reason why you can’t deliver rewards every day. But more importantly, it’s about consistently praising your employees, recognising their achievements and ultimately making them feel good. 

    A reward scheme will boost your employees’ confidence, tenacity and give them an extra bit of motivation. So, it’s a fantastic everyday benefit that will really have a positive impact on your employees and your business overall.

We hope this gives you a good foundation to start building an employee engagement strategy that will make a real impact on your employees. Providing benefits that can be incorporated into your employees’ daily lives will mean they’re more compelling, so you’ll likely see high levels of regular engagement with your programme. At the same time, having an effective reward and recognition programme in place will allow your employees to feel valued, motivated and confident every day at work. FEBF-1560938397_Peoplevaluegraph.png

Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs

Image source: Simply Psychology

This article is provided by Peoplevalue. 

In partnership with peoplevalue – The Employee Engagement Company

We are a leading provider of employee reward&recognition, benefits delivery&wellbeing solutions.

Contact us today