What are the little perks which your employer gives you?
We are trying to improve the perks which we offer – we are currently quite fortunate with the big stuff – decent salaries, decent pension contributions, healthcare, salary sacrifice car scheme, dental & optical appointments reimbursed, cycle to work. We’ve got a good bean to cup machine, one hundred different types of tea bags, fruit / healthy snacks which are all free. A really nice modern office with a 3/2 hybrid option, they are pretty flexible with working hours too. Free electric car charging. On the face of it, all perfect - but in reality, there are the usual management gripes which also need addressing.
It’s not that people take these benefits/ perks for granted but I’m curious about what other companies are also offering e.g. gym memberships, learning packages, volunteering days? Or what are the things that you would really value and make your job/ day better or more pleasant?
We do nice tea and coffee at the offices.
Birthday as a holiday day.
But most importantly, we are a really nice and supportive place to work and fight hard to maintain that reputation and reality for our team.
We are a charity, so most folk are not here for the money or perks.
In HE so not loads, but pension and holidays are best. We have a retailer discount scheme that's been quite handy - 4-10% off, and I've saved about £300 in the last year. Sometimes it's a bit of a faff - buying prepaid gift cards, but the savings soon add up. Saved a fair but at Halfords (car parts), B&Q and Currys (new telly and monitor). Use it for Morrisons and Iceland as well.
Our pension is pretty pathetic really - its up to me to salary sacrifice. But we can work anywhere we want and the discretionary bonus is good. Oh and 30 days off plus birthday. Gym, online doc etc. Good for a private company.
I also work in HE - so not much, however... we get to pick private healthcare (help with dental appointments) or on site gym membership.
We've got Tech scheme that works like the cycle to work scheme that resulted in my buying a very expensive Dobly Atmos setup from Currys.
We also have the Vivup - you can purchase vouchers for slightly less than the cost to save a few pounds here & there. Vivup also have a storefront & you can purchase items for much more money than you can else where.
Local Gov here, so get a decent pension and some other stuff (option for C2W equivalent) in additiona to the thigns that Sweden pretty much has as standard. The money is not brilliant, but the biggest advantage for me is the ability to work 100% remote if I want. The money and time it saves over having to commute to some place like Solna or Kista, or having to move to Stockholm, is priceless.
That said, I am not doing this job for the money. If I was, I'd still be in Stockholm and pimping myself out as a consultant or working for a bank right now.
I'm pretty fortunate to get most of the benefits listed above. In addition we used to get about £40 per month to put towards 'fitness' related expenses, this has been swapped for 4 x extra holiday days but on pre-defined days (we are a US co and also get 'Juneteenth' as a holiday). I also have a 6 week paid sabbatical for 10 years service this year. My (first world) problem is that with all this and bank hiolidays I usually have more leave than I can take (I work in sales so constantly have things going on that I find difficult to drop).
In HE so not loads, but pension and holidays are best. We have a retailer discount scheme that's been quite handy - 4-10% off
Also HE. We don't get all the cool stuff that PrinceJohn gets! But we do get free eye tests (so long as you're prepared for it to take 2 hours while a student does it). And you can get the Apple Educational Discount, which they're steadily chipping away at, but it's still better than a poke in the eye.
Still though, a university campus is a nice place to be, and it's generally a very supportive place to work.
I've never been arsed to use the Vivup stuff. Seems like such a faff. But maybe I should give it a go?
Oh, also - we can become members of the music centre. Which, before I had Long COVID, i'd be down at least 3 times a week to practice the drums, for free. That's a great deal.
I'm in the public sector so really good pension (with various top up options) and 8 weeks annual leave (incl bank hols) are the biggies. Option to buy an extra week of annual leave (so I have 9 weeks) is something I like - popularity seems to vary by department. Bike to work and a corporate discount scheme also useful for some.
Biggest improvement would be providing decent facilities for staff (decent chairs, desks, lighting, somewhere to eat lunch, cleaners that cleaned instead of sleeping) and management listening to, engaging and listening to staff and fixing broken stuff) and providing us with the tools needed to do our job. No point having a weekly staff engagement meeting for people to dial into if your staff only have 1 desk phone between 16, 1 computer between 2, and no one has been issued with headsets for the computers.
I look at that list.....and you think people need more?
It is work they are going to - not a fun club.
But as Matt says - atmosphere trumps all else - and that can't be bought or given as a voucher. Controversially.....workplace atmosphere not all 'management' driven. Colleagues can make it break a workplace too. A pledge of 'we won't employ any annoying nobbers no matter how good they look on paper or how desperate we are' would go a long way.....or slightly more seriously an employment process where their potential colleagues had the opportunity to meet candidates and input into if they would be a good fit.
I’m paid from when I leave the house, which is nice.
Overtime in the morning counts even if I get home early
We get ours through Zhoosh, employer puts £120 into our pot each month to go on various benefits or top up our pension
Benefits we can opt into
-income protection
-life insurance
-private medical insurance
-critical illness cover
-medicash cash plan
-dental cover
-C2W
-Electric car scheme
-L&G Employee assistance
-Tax free childcare
-Eye care
-discounted mortgage advisors
-Shopping card (love2shop)
-Cinema tickets
and then theres a discount hub thing where you can get % off various retailer gift cards 12% on adidas, 8% american golf, 9% costa, 6.5% M&S 11% toby carvery etc.
I tend not to use most of them mind, signed me and the mrs up to private medical insurance which includes £400 of dental treatment a year, already covered on life insurance and critical illness cover. The income protection was costly so the remaining £80 every month just gets used to top off my pension. Was going to use C2W but it was capped at 5k and the bike I wanted was more than that, might use it in future for some accessories mind
Give the Vivup a go @doris5000. Halfords is useful and usually stack it with another discount. And those where you can get 4% off a voucher, it's like cash, so doesn't interfere with any discounts. It's a bit of a faff. I have to make sure I pre-load my 'one for all card', but it saves me 7% at Iceland - our very local supermarket, and 4% at Morrisons - needs a voucher buying, but it's all on your phone.
Previous place - terrible. A C2W scheme that wasn't worth the paper it was written on with so many ridiculous caveats it was basically impossible to buy a bike that way. A range of apparent "perks" provided by an external agency which amounted to things like 1.5% off total spend at Boots if you spent more than £90 in a single transaction or 5% off a family of 4 at CentreParcs if you went Tuesday to Friday during term time or 3% off cinema tickets if it was for the first screening on a Wednesday morning. Mostly unusable nonsense.
Current place - really good. C2W with a £7000 limit, no restrictions (and I've used it already!). Salary sacrifice schemes to buy all sorts of products; lifestyle, homeware, cooking, audio/visual... It's all more expensive than high street prices but when you consider that it doesn't involve any credit agreements or interest payments, it's just a straightforward salary deduction, I guess it could be very attractive to some people. A salary sacrifice car lease scheme. 30 days holiday plus birthday. Very flexible working arrangements and a really good team of people.
Does not compute - please explain this concept.
I'm not poorly paid, but I live in a small house in the country and so have minimal outgoings. My skills/experience are rare and my work ethic since 2008-ish has been to try and do something with them that benefits society and not just me, hence the Army Reserves, hence current (and previous) job.
I fell off the wagon slightly when I first came to Sweden (worked for a bank) but managed to find a place where I could contribute to society after two years.
And those where you can get 4% off a voucher, it's like cash, so doesn't interfere with any discounts. It's a bit of a faff. I have to make sure I pre-load my 'one for all card', but it saves me 7% at Iceland - our very local supermarket, and 4% at Morrisons - needs a voucher buying, but it's all on your phone.
Thanks - can you elaborate? So you buy a £50 voucher for Tesco or whatever, then.... it's emailed to you?
Which you wave in front of the self-service scanner every time you shop, until it's run out?
God, I sound like some elderly luddite here. But it's surprisingly hard to find out how it actually works in practice...
We don't get all the cool stuff that PrinceJohn gets! But we do get free eye tests (so long as you're prepared for it to take 2 hours while a student does it). And you can get the Apple Educational Discount, which they're steadily chipping away at, but it's still better than a poke in the eye.
Oh yeah I also get educational discounts when I remember - I have Strava premium @50% off, & the saving I made on my macbook allowed me to get Applecare for free basically.
I think we also do some kind of electric car scheme.
Contentious opinion perhaps (I know, I was shocked too) but, most benefits schemes are crap IME. Absolutely no-one wants some bought-in programme where they can earn Flibble Points to buy Flibblebucks to spend in House Of Fraser. Put the money you save on nonsense towards a sizeable payrise across the board, "money" is a perk everyone will get behind.
One time my employer of the day bought everyone a branded coffee mug. A "perk" no-one really wanted but eh, saves bringing your own in and avoids "hey, who's taken my mug?!" dramaz. Then it turned into a mandate, everyone had to use company-provided mugs and personal ones weren't allowed on desks. Then it transpired that the cheap shit mugs they'd bought couldn't handle hot drinks, about half of them shattered. One girl had to go to hospital after being scalded when one exploded in her hand.
Perks for me would be quality-of-life enhancements: not having to commute into the office unless there was an actual reason to beyond presenteeism; being measured on output rather than raw hours; not having to pay for parking if I did come into an office; no dress code beyond not looking like a scruff; if I'm doing site visits then a sensible policy around travel/accommodation; not being expected to work for free; non-smokers getting the same breaks as smokers; equipment allocated by need rather than status (eg, Directors getting £3k laptops to browse the web whilst all the engineers are allocated Etch-a-Sketches); all this sort of stuff goes towards making a workplace Not Shit and much of it is free to the business.
Back when I had apprentices I implemented policies like this wherever it was within my power. I need you in the office if there's bench work. You don't need to ask permission to go for a poo, though if you're going to be a while then let me know in case someone asks after you. You need to leave early then that's fine and I don't need to know why, so long as there's nothing outstanding; by turns when we're reacting to an emergency I expect the same courtesy from you if we need to work back for 15 minutes. You're grown-ass adults and I couldn't give a shit if you turn up at 8:32 unless you're supposed to be manning a phone line which opens at that time (and in that case I'd want to pay you from 8:15 to allow you time to get set up for the morning, though that might be hard to fly past Upper Manglement).
A pledge of 'we won't employ any annoying nobbers no matter how good they look on paper or how desperate we are' would go a long way.....or slightly more seriously an employment process where their potential colleagues had the opportunity to meet candidates and input into if they would be a good fit.
You need to be just a little bit careful with this one because "not fitting with the culture" is a bawhair away from a discrimination case. If you've got a shop floor full of Daily Express readers and you're interviewing an Afghani immigrant then they're probably not going to be a great cultural fit, but what really needs to change there is the culture.
(I know that's not what you were meaning here, just saying that it can be a minefield if you're not savvy about it)
We get given just over 20k per year to 'spend' on benefits - most of mine goes into my pension and pays for private medical cover and extra holiday. And some smaller stuff like gym, various insurances etc.
We also have access to salary sacrifice electric cars, various tech, C2W etc.
We get given just over 20k per year to 'spend' on benefits
Where on earth do you work (and are you hiring)? That's a salary in itself for some people.
Back when I had apprentices I implemented policies like this wherever it was within my power. I need you in the office if there's bench work. You don't need to ask permission to go for a poo, though if you're going to be a while then let me know in case someone asks after you. You need to leave early then that's fine and I don't need to know why, so long as there's nothing outstanding; by turns when we're reacting to an emergency I expect the same courtesy from you if we need to work back for 15 minutes. You're grown-ass adults and I couldn't give a shit if you turn up at 8:32...
Micro-management is the absolute bane of office life - almost invariably there'll be some petty middle-manager in the office clock-watching others, demanding to know why your break was 35 minutes instead of 30, quibbling over dress code...
After 5 years we can get a 6 month sabatical or split into two three month periods. I've used that now but it was great. You can also request unpaid leave if you run out of holidayds.
Nothing, not even cycle to work scheme or even a tea bag
We've got a decent set of benefits here, plenty of those listed above, but it's the intangibles which really make a difference. Twenty years ago, my mother died while I was working for a very large well-known insurance company. I took two weeks off, between her death and funeral, and returned to work to plenty of sympathy from my manager but also the words, 'You've got 3 days of compassionate leave. How do you want to take the rest, unpaid or holiday?' I spent the rest of the year measuring out my little remaining leave and resentful.
I have just returned to work after my father's death. My leave has been paid, with no questions. The MD of the company sat down with me to check that I was ok. People have stopped to chat and check-in. It's a very different experience.
But, I would like a decent dental plan through work before my last remaining teeth escape!
Other than a pension, paid parking pass for local council car park and tea/coffee we don't have any perks....
Small company of 8 people...
Fairly flexible with WFH and appointments etc.
There has been mutterings of health care or salary sacrifice car scheme, but nothing concrete.
I work for a big ish multi national and apart from them matching up to 7% on pension we don't get much. However, the one thing that stops me leaving is the holiday. We get 25 days plus bank holidays but we can buy an additional 10 days (used to be 5), which I buy every year and always use.
An organisation within central gov:
- 35 % pension (Inc. my contribution of 7 % or so)
- Decent annual leave, annually increasing
- Annual leave purchase/selling (although the latter is taxed!)
- Massive flexibility. I compress my hours. Appointments are no issue.
- Decent training budget, got colleagues doing Masters, etc.
- Salary sacrifice stuff, C2W, etc.
- I can work in a significant number of locations
Not the obvious ones compared to private sector, but some I would struggle to put a price on..
Free tea and coffee (instant).
How does the buying holiday days thing work, is it just a case of giving up the salary you would have gotten for those days?
I got a badge for my 10 year anniversary.
That insurance company that I mentioned in my post above gave me £50 vouchers for my 5 year anniversary. Staff who were there for 15 years were given shares and also taken to a Six Nations game, private box, post match dinner with ex-players.
So, when I approached my 10 year anniversary I was looking forward to something nice. We actually got a forgettable dinner with a bunch of people I'd never met (other 10 year celebrants!) in a local hotel. And a glass paperweight thing, which went to the tip when I last moved. I was more puzzled than anything.
Share Options/ Save
We get various other stuff but TBH it's hard to see past this. The COVID era sharesave maturities started coming through last year and the returns are just silly. Some months I was getting a four figure sum for what amounted to an £88 deduction 60 months previous.
We get the minimum pension contribution, and salary sacrifice options for cyclescheme and a health plan. Oh, and birthday off.
Perks I've seen elsewhere I like are more holiday and higher pension contributions. I personally don't really care about any of the other stuff you often see.
Where MrsSalmon works they've got some scheme which is basically @Cougar's Flibblebucks as far as I can see. She's tried to use it in Sainsbury's a couple of times and nobody seems to know anything about it.
We get given just over 20k per year to 'spend' on benefits
Where on earth do you work (and are you hiring)? That's a salary in itself for some people.
Ours is structured similar in that there is a sizeable 'pension and benefits' element to remuneration, although it is a percentage rather than a flat amount.
I just see it as an accounting trick, it is pay that isn't part of your salary so not taken into account if you were made redundant etc. And it replaces matched contributions for pensions.
Crikey! There’s some postings there that reinforce some of my prejudice around STW… I wish It’d not seen it, off for a lie down!
Free tea and coffee (instant).
+1, we have to chip in to buy the milk tho
C2W (£5000 cap, I think? Way more than I'd spend), secure, underground bike parking (nice in a city centre 🙂 ), plenty of showers, big changing room with decent lockers, breakfast laid on (cereals, muesli, toast, bagels, coconut bircher FTW), fruit and biscuits on every floor every daygood tea and coffee, subsidised health insurance, subsidised gym membership, can buy 5 days holiday, an extra day over Christmas, salary sacrifice EV scheme, season ticket loan, 24/7/365 confidential support service, decent bonus, had a rise every year I've been here. I have a great manager who's really flexible (which cuts both ways, I'd like to add 🙂 ) and although I can't use the underground city centre car park during office hours, I CAN use it at evenings and on weekends, which has been unexpectedly fantastic! 🙂
Local Gov here.
Probably the best perk is the WFH on a 2 in office / 3 at home basis. It means, especially at this time of year, I have the opportunity to get outside an run/ride on my lunch or early finish.
Also get flexi time and 3 flexi days / 4 weeks + 31 days of AL.
I also have access to the NHS Fleet Solutions car scheme so it means I can drive a nicer car than I usually would go for, for the same price as buying 'normally'.
In addition we have C2W (which I don't do), and a similar scheme for electronics.
Discount at the local airport for car parking.
Public Transport Season ticket loan.
Ability to buy holiday
Really good pension scheme with continuous service if we move to another Local Authority.
Finally, I think another great perk is working for a Local Authority itself. Very unlikely to go bust, and even if they do, a lot of the jobs likely to be retained. I've also not known anyone be sacked, despite some very loose practices/lack of work. I've concluded that it must be nigh on impossible to be sacked from a Local Authority.
How does the buying holiday days thing work, is it just a case of giving up the salary you would have gotten for those days?
Ours comes off as salary sacrifice, across 12 months. I've been doing it so long I don't miss the money as I've never really had it.
I forgot to say we have share options, but I'm not sure they are a perk as such because I think they statistically more likely to come to nothing.
I’ve been able to pay into saveshare for many years. £250 pretax a month spread over 5 yearly schemes, maturity each year. My company share price bounces around near the bottom so often just get the cash back but just occasionally, the share price rises at the right time and we get a mini windfall.
Unfortunately the scheme got pulled 5 years ago. Looking into it, it turns out it’s a way of raising cash from your employees, it can be a cheap way of getting a cash injection but turns into an expensive method if the share price rises. I suspect they want to insulate themselves from a costly payout.
But as a result, most employees are no longer shareholders in the business. Which of course means they are less engaged with how it performs.
