5 Unique Employee Benefits: Attract, Retain, & Engage Talent

Recently, Glassdoor published a fabulous blog post describing some of the best and must uniqe employee benefits that organizations are now offering.

Here were some of our favorites:

• Pet and children daycares onsite
• Freedom to use an hour of your workday to exercise
• 100% free gender reassignment surgery
• Pet health insurance
• Sabbatical programs

These are all fantastic! But for some of the HR executives reading this, that can seem like a lot to take on. These types of benefits can require a lot of detail and planning with various stakeholders. For organizations that need to make a large impact on their attraction, retention, and employee engagement KPI’s sooner rather than later, these benefits won’t be the quick answer.

That’s why we decided to make a list of simple (cost effective!) and unique employee benefits you can implement ASAP.

1. Unlimited Vacation Time

This benefit may seem like it could be a challenge to implement, but many organizations have actually seen more efficiency and productivity using this system. This “new age” vacation program goes along with the breaking of traditional work hours. Decades ago, two weeks of vacation time was enough for an employee to recharge if they worked 9-5 everyday. Newsflash: no one works 9- 5 anymore! Employees are working more hours than ever, and even when they aren’t actively working they are still available 24/7 via technology. New work hours call for new vacation time policies.

Through this new system you can also eliminate technology and management associated with the tracking of vacation. Also, this empowers employees to take time when they need, and feel ownership of when they think it is most important to be at work.

2. Volunteer Days

Many organizations allow employees to get together a few times a year to participate in a corporate charity event. This is great, but in boxes employees into only one way to make a difference. These types of unique employee benefits programs allow your employees to take “X” amount of days every year to volunteer for a cause that truly means something to them. This is great for your employees’ morale, as well as for your corporate social responsibility.

3. Charitable Matching Program

These type of unique employee benefits program are another great way to improve your corporate social responsibility. Your organization can promise to match all charitable donations made by your employees up to a certain dollar amount each year. This is simple to do, and many organizations probably already have donation budgets set aside for charities similar to where their employees are donating.

4. Retirement Lifestyle Planning

There has been so much energy devoted to researching and implementing programs for millennials, the mass exodus of baby boomers leaving the workforce as an issue has been neglected. This issue is becoming an urgent initiative for HR teams, as many baby boomers are turning into reluctant retirees. Download our guide to preparing for reluctant retiree conversations here.

These tenured employees are the most valuable to an organization because of the knowledge they hold. Implementing a retirement lifestyle planning program can ensure a smooth transition of knowledge through succession planning. This type of unique employee benefits programs also treat your baby boomer employees with the respect they deserve after years of service. Interested in retirement lifestyle planning for your organization?

5. Dual Career Couples Assistance

Many organizations offer relocation packages to employees they ask to move a large distance for work. While these packages are great, they usually don’t consider if that person is a part of a couple. Dual career couples assistance programs help the partner or spouse of a new employee find employment in their new location. This is a great way to have a proactive stance on gender equality, as it assumes that both people in a couple have careers that are vital and important! Interested in dual career couples assistance for your organization?

Raymond Lee

Raymond Lee is the President of Careerminds, a global outplacement company based in Wilmington, Delaware. He has over 20 years of human resource, outplacement, and career consulting experience. He has his bachelor’s in psychology and holds a Master’s Degree in Industrial/Organizational Psychology from Louisiana Tech University. He is active in SHRM and ATD. Raymond’s been featured on SiriusXM Business Radio, CareerTalk, and the Wall Street Journal and he’s published a book titled, Clocking Out: A Stress-Free Guide to Career Transitions.