Outside the box Employee Benefits?

I'm looking into partnership or barter opportunities where our company can provide services in exchange for a benefit to all the employees. For example, securing a commercial cleaning contract with a local day care service, in exchange for day care services for the kids of our cleaners. As long as the value is proportional, I've found many other small business owners open to these kind of trades!

We keep grocery gift cards and gas cards in office, employee of the month provides extra ETO, free house cleaning, team building events to fun places, 401k, paid holidays, ETO, PTO

There are some good answers already - I’ll just add for anyone searching in the future. I tend to think about employee benefits in three buckets:

1. Compensation – pay, bonuses, gift cards, profit sharing.
2. Flexibility – predictable schedules, time off when life happens, advance notice of schedule changes.
3. Growth – training, new responsibilities, certifications, and a clear path to higher pay.

Small businesses often struggle to compete on compensation, but they can be incredibly competitive on flexibility and growth.

One thing I’ve seen overlooked is creating a clear path to advancement. If employees know exactly how they can increase their skills, responsibilities, and pay over time, that can be more valuable than many low-cost perks.

If I had a limited budget, I’d focus on flexibility, development, and showing employees what their future with the company could look like.

Do you have an ice machine? You need one. 

Hi JessieClean,

Great thread & ideas for us all to glean from, love it! 

For us, as we have grown, we have taken one cleaner a year and have helped them start their own cleaning business.  Sometimes it works out great and other times they come back under our company as a W-2 employee, but with a whole lot more appreciation and respect. Either way we have seen this as a positive benefit for the whole team and community and has only positively impacted us all. Teach a person how to manage their own business and they can impact their community!

Gym memberships, spotify for technicians who listen to music all the time, I got audible for people who wanted to listed to development books (or fun ones)

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. 

For this specific time of year we are purchasing Thanksgiving meals for all employees. 

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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