7 Out-of-The-Box Employee Benefits That Improve Retention

Guest blog by Richard Conn, Senior Director, Search Marketing for RingCentral

Retention is important. Keeping the talent that makes your business work must be an important part of any business strategy.

No organization can function without its people—they create value for their organization. It’s in everyone’s interest to keep staff members that they don’t want to lose. Sometimes, keeping those employees on board doesn’t take better salaries or working hour agreements—benefits can help.

Some sources suggest benefits are actually better than simple pay rises for retention: according to Vantage Circle, 89% of employees aged 18-34 and 84% aged 35-44 prefer benefits to salary raises.

But what can you offer employees if you can’t add more holiday weeks or dental insurance? Below we will give seven out-of-the-box ideas of benefits you can provide for your employees. 

• Make commuting easier

There are a lot of benefits that you can apply regarding commuting and transportation. 

When it comes to bicycles, you can offer bicycle facilities, training courses, and even insurance. 

If you have employees that travel by train, you can be flexible with their starting and finishing times so they can take more convenient trains. 

And for those that travel by car, you can arrange rotas and timetables for a carpool using booking systems, and be flexible on arrival time for those employees. Carpools are a good way for everyone to save money on their gas costs and reduce their emissions as well.

In fact, two-thirds of young people are concerned about the environment, so any green transport measures are likely to go down well with younger employees as well. 

Similarly, you can also consider offering employees more remote working days, if possible, depending on how far away they live from work. Technology like omnichannel routing is especially helpful, allowing employees to work from home. Consider allowing employees with long commutes to work from home on Friday or Monday.

• Health and fitness

One huge benefit is to provide an on-site gym or fitness area for your employees. Almost everyone is aware of the risks of a sedentary lifestyle and wants to exercise more, but the problem is time. Having those resources or facilities at work saves people a lot of time, especially if they’re allowed a little bit of time out of their working day to utilize them.

However, there is obviously a cost. If you can’t justify the expense or the use of space, there are other alternatives. You can allocate time in the working day for employee jogging groups, hire a yoga instructor, dietician, or another health expert on certain days, or even sponsor an external gym membership for your employees. 

Lastly, screen-heavy work like contact center reporting doesn’t have to have a physical strain on your employees. You can offer benefits like subsidized physiotherapy and eyeglasses for employees who are very screen-facing.

• Pets

Did you know that two-thirds of American households have a pet? Most people consider a pet as a member of their own family. It goes without saying that people love their dogs, cats, birds… and any other pet they might have. 

Pet insurance is relatively cheap—insuring a cat against an accident is only $10 a month—but covering the insurance is a gesture that any employee with a pet would appreciate. The cost is also relatively less than other benefits since you’re unlikely to have 100% of your employees be pet owners. 

• Financial information and education

Financial concerns rank very highly amongst stress factors.

Yet, research shows that up to two-thirds of millennials haven’t received any financial education. You may not be able to increase the salaries of your employees but you might be able to offer them useful financial education. This could even include a deduction-based savings scheme, for example. 

There are a lot of options and employees who stress out over financial matters will really appreciate these kinds of benefits.

• Fraud protection benefits

It might sound unusual, but credit card fraud impacts a lot of people; 21% of the UK have lost access to their credit card because of fraudulent attempts over 2019, according to Compare the Market. Of that 21%, more than half lost money too. In the US, over 4 billion financial records were breached in 2019 alone.

This can be a benefit that you can offer to employees who want it—probably not something you would automatically sign people up for. But some people, especially those who use e-commerce a lot, for example, or less tech-savvy employees concerned about their computers, might appreciate this benefit more.

There is a range of identity fraud protection options available to look into; cybersecurity is a growing field. 

• Volunteering days

According to Stanford University, a whopping 90% of Americans want to volunteer. However, only around a quarter actually do. 

A little paid time off to do community voluntary services can go a long way. You can appeal to the altruistic nature of your employees and give them the time and space to give something back to their community. 

They might even learn something during their time volunteering that they can bring back to the workplace—volunteering experience is looked upon positively by recruitment for a reason. The experience of teaching old people how to use their tablets, for example, might be similar to explaining what is inbound and outbound call centers to clients.

• Break rooms and times

According to Forbes, the “work hard” mentality in American workplaces isn’t as productive as it seems. Regular breaks make employees more engaged, more productive, and more healthy. Nobody can spend all day selling call software or sorting through data entry without losing a little bit of their productive power.

Therefore, consider separating a part of the office as a dedicated break room that employees can use whenever they want. You can spend as much or as little as you like on this making the break area—they can range from a couple of comfortable chairs to the pool tables and PlayStations that you can sometimes see in big tech companies. 
If your employees are embarrassed to use the room, you can start by using it yourself and instructing other management to do so, too. 

Make the most of benefits

The benefits you choose to give to your employees can be simply financial, or they could alter the way your people work and your corporate culture in general. One thing is clear: it’s not just about salary. Benefits are key too.