When you finally find the right employees, you don't want them to leave your company after just a few months or a year of service. If your company does not have the budget to offer significant pay raises, giving employees unique job perks can help you retain good people and turn your company into an employer of choice for local residents. Here are five job perks that can help you improve employee retention rates.
1. Exercise Breaks
Exercise improves mood and boosts energy, so offering exercise breaks as one of your job perks can benefit your company in more ways than one. Patagonia allows employees to take breaks for surfing, but you don't have to offer anything that exciting. Letting employees take a break to walk around the building, attend a short yoga session or do some stretches can increase productivity and influence workers to stay with your company.
2. Concierge Services
It's difficult for many employees to maintain a good balance between their work and their personal lives. When people are busy at work, they tend to let other things fall through the cracks. As a result, some companies offer concierge services as one of their job perks. Google employees have access to a free laundry service, while Evernote gives employees free house-cleaning services once every two weeks.
3. Parental Leave
The United States doesn't mandate paid maternal or paternal leave, so it's up to employers to decide if they want to pay employees to stay at home with their infants. If you want to increase employee retention and keep great employees on your team, think about offering some form of parental leave. In 2015, Netflix announced a new policy of unlimited parental leave, but you don't have to offer quite that much time off to make an impact.
4. Sabbaticals With a Purpose
Employees working long hours don't have a lot of time to volunteer for their favorite causes. Some companies try to fix the problem by offering paid service sabbaticals. During a service sabbatical, an employee is paid to do some type of service work, whether it is building a house with Habitat for Humanity or working with children from low-income households. As an added bonus, offering this type of job perk can actually make the world a better place.
5. Commuting Benefits
If a lot of your employees take public transportation or ride their bikes to work, some of your job perks should focus on improving their commute in some way. In New York City, a number of employers pay for their workers to ride the subway every day. SummitLLC gives their employees free bike-share memberships. Helping employees with their commutes is a good way to increase engagement.
Retaining good employees keeps morale high and reduces turnover. If you have been struggling to keep good people on your team, consider offering one or more of these job perks to entice valued team members to stay with your company for the long haul.
Photo courtesy of Stuart Miles at FreeDigitalPhotos.net
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