Outside the box Employee Benefits?
Greetings! What are some outside the box benefits you offer employees? As a small business, insurance is cost prohibitive as is offering PTO.
What are some low-cost benefits your employees appreciate?
Forum Discussion
Out of the box ideas could be something like buying groceries or gas as a "bonus". It will impact their lives to save that tank of gas, or that trip to the grocery store, is a write off, and will show appreciation for your employees
I absolutely love this! Thank you for the ideas. I also often forget that these kinds of gifts/benefits are a write off. Thank you for the reminder!
Hey JessieClean, it's great that you're looking out for out-of-the-box ideas for employee benefits!
What benefits do you currently offer your employees right now?Hi Julie!
We are currently seeking local experts to offer Lunch & Learn opportunities for our employees in the following areas:
- Financial Fitness & Credit Repair
- Health & Wellness
- Mental Health
- Self Defense
We try and get together quarterly to decompress and just have fun together. We have 13 employees and our work family is very close. It's nice to get together and let loose. In the past, we've treated our employees to breakfast, had craft nights, celebrated divorces/engagements/baby showers etc, and taken our crew out for drinks and bowling.Hi Julie,
We offer quite a few little perks as we're a small business with 2 owners so there's not a huge profit margin to work with. Not yet, at least! Some of our perks are:
1) Free bottled water, coffee, tea, and creamer
2) Free breakfasts and lunches on occasion
3) Quarterly gatherings where we typically cover a couple of drinks and apps
4) No evenings, weekends, or holidays (Saturdays are voluntary if we have work available)
5) This year we are paying our team on Thanksgiving and Christmas. It's the first time we've been able to do this in 5 years and we're very excited! It's a surprise.
6) We keep popsicles in the shop during the summer months
7) I'm currently setting up Lunch & Learns in areas of interest: Financial Fitness, Mental Health & Wellness, Self-Defense, Credit Repair
8) Our employees keep 100% of their tips
9) Recognize and celebrate life events (birthdays, baby showers, divorce parties, Jessie-Versaries, etc)
10) Beer Wednesdays - We have a fresh growler of cold craft beer available for after work
11) We have cold and allergy meds, pain reliever and feminine care products available for use as well
Future Goals:
As a women owned business, a dream of ours is to partner with an accredited and local childcare provider and/or provide childcare in-house to remove that barrier for working parents. We'd like to subsidize childcare costs and keep it close to work to lessen the burden for our employees.
We'd also like to offer earned and accrued PTO for our team but it's a ways out from happening still.this is so similar to what we do I had to double check that I didn't write it. I forgot to mention in a reply somewhere in the is thread that we also stock person hygiene products, pain relievers, PMS products, etc. Just two on your list that we don't do, the quarterly gathering and the lunch and learn, nice ideas
Anytime the value exceeds the cost. For many, doing something that makes the spouse, kids or family happy, is a good bet. Buying a plane ticket back home so they can be with their family during the holidays, picking up the tab on a swimming class membership for the kiddos, giving the employee a spa certificate to give to his wife or sports tickets to give to the husband... etc, etc.
Love those ideas! Thank you for sharing.
We hand out gift cards to Amazon when a crew has done an over the top job or came under budget on a job. We will sometimes buy the crew lunch. During hot mid western summers we will deliver popsicles or ice cream to the crews on their job sites.
Love that! We have popsicles and water in our shop for our team, as well. We bought them as a one off because it was so hot out but they loved it so much we kept getting them! I love that you deliver it. As a fellow mid-westerner, I'm sure it's much appreciated.
Good question. Generous mileage reimbursement, careful tallying of tips and putting the tip function in front of clients point of sale, employee birthdays celebrated, drinks and snacks in office which evolved into breakfast foods. Gift cards for car washes. Coffee gift cards. Candy dish or other goodies in office. Turkeys or grocery gift cards for Thanksgiving, small bonus at Christmas with card and gift. Take manager to lunch/brunch. Flexible days off, no evening/weekends/holidays or if we do work them is is voluntary, and paid at over time pay. Health care coverage is still out of our reach but would be the biggest thing.
We also **bleep** off steam by sharing a cocktail often on Fridays!
Ooo, what a nice idea! I love a good cocktail 🍹
(also, it looks like the word 'blow' was one of our moderated words! I took off the filter so it shouldn't be filtered in the future 👍)
These a great benefits! Thank you for sharing. We do quite a few of these as well, aside from the turkey and grocery cards at Thanksgiving. That is a great idea!!! How many employees do you have and how long have you been in business?
Our crew is also off on evenings, weekends, and holidays - and also voluntary if we do have extra work available. We do not pay OT pay for weekend work but that's a great perk!!! Health coverage is sadly too far out of our reach as well.
At some point in the not so distant future, we'd like to partner with a child care provider or provide in-house childcare to remove that barrier for working parents with young children. We wouldn't cover the whole cost but at least help offset it. Having childcare close to work would help (we believe) with overall attendance and job satisfaction, in addition to helping make our people's lives a bit easier. It's a dream of ours, as a women-owned business. Goals, amirite?
Employee Appreciation events go a really long way. We have 3 per year, our annual kick off the season, Clearview Day in August and then a Holiday apprecition in December. Here's a video. https://www.youtube.com/shorts/M29FC3E1Jgw
WOW! I just watched the video. Thank you for sharing! That actually made me tear up a bit. They were so surprised and happy! What a great perk. Bravo! I aspire to be able to do something like that for my people in the future. That was beautiful. Thank you.
May I ask how many employees you have and how long have you been in business?Thank you!! This is our 20th year and we have 26 employees! We started small with these events and have grown and evolved. Our first one was simply a BBQ in our backyard. We have 3 main events, Kickoff party early March, Clearview Day in August and then a Holiday Party in December. If you have too many they get watered down and the team comes to expect it and not appreciate it as much.
Retirement Plan - Simple IRA, we match up to 3%, you can save up to $16k/yr, bit more if you are over 50. The administration is straightforward. Can also be a big tax savings for the owner if you are drawing a salary
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For this specific time of year we are purchasing Thanksgiving meals for all employees.
I was thinking about this exact thing today and came up withs discounted prices on monthly massages at a local massage therapist, fitness center/gym membership, monthly food truck if you have an office or workshop, clothes/footwear at a local store. Being able to get employees special pricing would be a nice perk that doesn’t cost the business. Money is definitely the main motivation to a point so I don’t want to spend money on perks that could be used to increase pay.
