Low-Cost Benefits You Can Offer Your Employees

In a competitive job market, it can be hard for small businesses to attract and keep quality employees and decrease turnover.

However, even without the resources or budget of a huge corporation, there are plenty of ways that you can give value to your employees. All it takes is a bit of creativity. Take a look at the ideas below and consider which are right for your business:

Flexible hours & work-from-home options
Many managers and employers are wary of giving their employees too much freedom. While it’s true that people can take advantage of lenient work schedules, studies have found that in general, greater flexibility promotes better productivity, efficiency, and employee satisfaction. A flexible schedule can promote trust and cooperation between you and your employees.

Continuing education & employee growth opportunities
During work hours, encourage employees to improve themselves and learn more about their field. This can come in the form of seminars and peer-training, or simply 30 minutes set aside each day for internet research. Some companies have a crowdsourced library in an area of the office, where employees can spend downtime. Not only does this improve the talent that you have building your business, but employees will feel challenged and respected. Even better, you might find some amazing potential in your employee pool, and hear creative ideas and solutions that you wouldn’t have found yourself.

Charitable contributions and volunteer hours
Employees are more likely to be engaged and creative when they feel like they’re doing something worth doing! Even if your company isn’t curing disease in third-world-countries, you can encourage employees to participate in community volunteer efforts and charitable work. Offer incentives and plenty of opportunity. Some companies pay for a few weekly volunteer hours. You can maximize this initiative by taking advantage of tax breaks available for small businesses contributions to charity. Talk to us about how to get the most out of it.

Create a fun work space
This can be as simple as a monthly movie day. It could be free snacks in the kitchen, and fun games and contests with simple gift cards as a prize.

Listen to your employees
Encourage opportunities for all of your employees to be involved in the business. Listen to their ideas, and make sure that they feel valued. You might have regular meetings in which you encourage employees to pitch their ideas to improve your product or service, retain more customers, and improve operations efficiency. Most of all, listen to your employees about the benefits that are important to them. This can go a long way towards improving employee loyalty and building your company’s culture.