When the givin' is easy
It's the season of creative reward – check out our ten perks to give your staff at summerThe sun is shining. The school holidays draw near. And workers of the UK are uniting in just one aim: to escape the confines of the office environment.
But summer also brings with it opportunities to strengthen those tricky employer-employee relationships by introducing additional, maybe even surprise, perks.
Like what? Well, like these.
1. Worried about your staff disconnecting from the job while on their hols? Well, keep them team-building by getting them to share their breaks with their colleagues. John Lewis owns and runs five holiday destinations, at which employees can sojourn at a fraction of the price of a standard break. Locations include a 16th century castle on Brownsea Island and a water sports club on Lake Bala in North Wales.
2. Not work-centric enough? Then establish an office or two in top holiday spots and see how well your staff combine work and play. Energy recruitment specialists Spencer Ogden reward high-performing staff with trips to its Ibiza office – how much actual work is done out there is unclear.
3. Make a special break an award for outstanding performance. Whether it’s a weekend in Paris, a trip on the Orient Express or just a weekend by the coast, make a holiday a star feature of your rewards and recognition package. Alternatively, use a lottery-style prize draw to award lucky (or deserving) employees with summer festival tickets.
4. Partner up with a travel company to offer staff special rates. John Lewis again stands out from the crowd with this one, offering all of its 80,000 employees discounted holidays through Tui Travel. In addition, employees who register on the dedicated travel website accessible via the company intranet are entered into a draw to win Tui Travel vouchers worth £1,000.
5. Make the most of your location. Based near the Diglis Marina, Worcester company Postcode Anywhere knows how to keep employees rooted closer to home. It offers its employees the opportunity to book out the company barge or just use a few of its kayaks in a lunch break.
6. Offer your longer-serving employees fully-paid sabbaticals. This is an increasingly popular benefit with almost a quarter of the Fortune 100 Best Companies to Work For boasting this among their staff perks.
7. Two birds, one stone: help fund employees undertaking trips that include voluntary work and you might just scoop an additional CSR boost too.
8. Flexibility counts. Give your staff the option to buy and sell holidays and make savings while you gain employee loyalty. Research suggests that employees highly value this benefit, and as more employees tend to buy than sell holidays, it can be a particularly cost-effective perk for the more budget-conscious operation.
9. Think school holidays, think family-friendly benefits. School hols may please the kids but they can be a nightmare for working parents – unless you have the backing of a supportive company. Childcare vouchers remain one of the most popular family-friendly benefits companies can offer but few realise – or advertise the fact – that they can be used to cover a whole range of services including summer plays chemes and camps for children right up to the age of 15. Music to the ears of many hard-pressed parents.
10. Every day counts. Offer discount vouchers for theme-parks, restaurants, theatres or shops. It may not be a holiday, but it can go a long way to helping parents through those financially demanding summer months. (Just make sure you offer the same to your child-free employees too.)
Today’s employees increasingly seek out jobs and companies that can offer work-life balance. Holiday benefits make up a critical part of this – if employees feel they are supported to take proper time out then they’ll likely stick around for longer and work harder as they go.
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