Did you know that U.S companies lose $550 billion annually in employee productivity due to absenteeism and presenteeism? As there are many reasons as to why this is, we can confidently say employees admit that work is major source of stress for them, negatively affecting their productivity potential.
So, what’s so stressful in everyone’s lives that it keeps disrupting the natural order of employee obligations to complete their assigned work not only on time, but flawlessly — if possible.
Aside from tight deadlines and other stressors on the mind in the office, anything else really. Every single person has problems they have to deal with. Whether that be family medical issues on the mind, financial hardships weighing down creativity or even worrying about the political consequences of how congress acts and reacts to an infinite number of internal/external variables at any given time —especially in recent times where the political climate in the U.S. is as hot as anyone can remember.
With these stressors and more constantly on the mind of your employees, you are at risk for the following hardships in direct result of high employee turnover rates:
- Complete havoc on your finances due to replacing and training someone new to fill in the vacated position(s)
- The disruption of business-critical projects, campaigns, reports, tasks, etc.
- Company-wide breakdown in morale across all levels of organizational alignment adds to the fire
- Hundreds of hours a week wasted in some shape or form in the organization due to employee churn and more
So, wouldn’t it be in your best interest to offer an employee benefits package that they would genuinely be happy about?
You might be thinking to yourself, “Well, we already offer social security, unemployment insurance, workers’ compensation, family and medical leave with healthcare options, dental, vision, and 401k plans… What else could they possibly want that I could afford? Our budget is stretched enough already, I don’t think we could offer anything else.”
Quit worrying!
There are plenty of non-traditional options that employers can add to their employee benefits program that can potentially lead to the following wins for them:
- They will not only attain new talent with unique and sought-after benefits, but they will retain them too
- With lower, and less employee churn rate occurring, it can lead to less turnover, project disruption, hours wasted, finances lost and more
- New benefits added don’t have to break the bank, and for the most part will cost them little to nothing to implement
- Happier employees lead to greater work productivity
By offering an attractive employee benefits program to your workforce, you will see a ripple effect of positivity flow throughout your organization by creating harmony through the act of ripping down departmental silos, increasing communication and the flow of creativity in all areas of business.
In short, a happy and productive work force will not only lead to an increase in financial success, but word will get out that your business is a place people want to be at. Once you establish that unique and attractive benefits program for your company, it will only lead to a surge of talented people wanting to work for you.
Below, you will find an array of attractive benefits that promote health and wellness you can potentially add to your employee packages that won’t necessarily add much extra cost to your current budget, if any.
Non-Traditional Employee Benefits Program Ideas
According to SnackNation, the non-traditional benefits that won’t break your bank and help to promote health and wellness fall into the following categories:
- Nutrition and general health
- Productivity
- Fitness and physical activity
- Challenges and contests
- Rejuvenation
- Mental health and personal growth
- Cool perks, just for fun
Continue into each category to reveal some unique, easy benefit ideas that can make all the difference in the world for a business to attain and retain top talent.
Nutrition and general health
- Provide employees with healthy snacks and lunches
- Bring in a dietician to talk about healthy eating topics
- Publish a workplace wellness newsletter highlighting fitness, nutrition and other educational content
Productivity
- Create flexible work hours for staff
- Offer one remote working day each week
- Offer to pay for work-related trainings to improve employee skills
Fitness and physical activity
- Participate in a 5k run
- Keep footballs, basketballs, hula hoops, etc. around the workplace
- Offer to pay a portion of their gym memberships to reduce costs for them
Challenges and contests
- The seven hours of sleep challenge
- Most steps taken challenge
- Healthy cooking contests
Rejuvenation
- Pay employees to volunteer
- Give employees a vacation day on (or the day after) their birthday
- Offer massages or discounts for massages
Mental health and personal growth
- Host lunch and learns
- Teach employees the basics of finance
- Start a community library
Cool perks just for fun
- Attire-themed days of the week
- Gift card giveaways for major project completions or sales
- Half-day Fridays in the summer
These are just several ideas that you can use to enhance your employee benefits program for your team members. As you can see, a lot of these ideas really aren’t that expensive to implement. One last tip, take some of the ideas you like, and create a company survey to see if any of your employees would be interested in implementing any of them.
What do you have to lose?
Want to learn more about creating an employee-centric benefits program? Read the How to Implement an Attractive Employee Benefits Program Guide.
