Forum Discussion
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?
25 Replies
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!
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.
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 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
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.
