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?
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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
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.
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.
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?We also **bleep** off steam by sharing a cocktail often on Fridays!
After a week of hard work, I'm sure that's much appreciated!!!
We have Beer Wednesdays! We're across the street from a woman-owned restaurant / micro brewery and she's freaking fabulous. They have $7 growler fills on Weds so we try and have a cold growler of craft beer available when they get back to the shop. Quarterly, we try and treat everyone out and get together. It's great seeing everyone all gussied up and gabbin'. We try to cover their first couple cocktails / apps when we go out. We have barbequed for them, hosted a craft night, bonfire party, etc.
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.
