Does Your Employer Provide Any of These Modern Perks?

“Choose a job you will love, and you will never have to work a day in your life.” Where have you read or heard that before? Naturally, as we spend a large chunk of our waking hours working, it helps if we enjoy our jobs. However, it’s not just the jobs we can enjoy, but also the perks attached to them.

Business Insider reports that 57% of all workers take perks into strong account when considering a new job, while nearly 80% of employees would prefer new benefits to a pay rise. So, what does your employer offer? Perhaps your boss could consider these ideas for perks offered in real life by various firms.

Perks for… your pets

Maybe you canine believe it, but PetSmart allows its employees to bring their pets to the workplace, says Business News Daily. These workers also get a 15% discount on pet-related merchandise and grooming, while training classes are thrown in for free. That could give you paws for thought…

Another pet-friendly company, Dogtopia, entitles its employees to a personal wellness fund that they can put forwards trips their pooches might need to make to the vet.

No standardised work hours

At its California headquarters, well-known TV streamer Netflix doesn’t track its employees’ work hours or days off. Instead, the company just monitors what work these employees do. Therefore, it doesn’t matter when or how long they are office-bound, just as long as this work gets done.

“We intermix work and personal time quite a bit, doing email at odd hours, taking off weekday afternoons for kids’ games, etc.,” Netflix explains about how the system works in practice.

Onsite health services

There’s nothing new about health-related perks. Indeed, in research highlighted by the Harvard Business Review, 88% of workers said that they would consider the perks of improved health, dental and vision insurance when deciding on a new job.

However, Steelcase has gone further by setting up its own onsite Wellbeing Hub where employees can attend appointments with therapists and nurses. Your own business might prefer to set up a more software-based scheme, like the Employee Assistance Programme from LifeWorks.

Fitness opportunities

Employers know it bodes well if they see their employees often paying visits to the gym or the swimming pool. For this reason, you can understand why Reebok encourages its employees to utilise the footwear brand’s comprehensive onsite gym.

Similarly, the outdoor clothing purveyor Patagonia invites its workers to spend midday breaks surfing. Well, it certainly must help that the company is based in California, of all places. Even on the premises, though, Patagonia lets its staff make use of onsite yoga classes.

Encouraging charitable behaviour

You don’t have to look far to see studies revealing how highly workers, particularly millennial ones, value employers emphasising generosity in the wider community.

Hence, you could take inspiration from companies like Google, which matches whatever monetary charitable contributions its employees make. The search giant also donates $50 to a non-profit for every five hours a Google employee spends volunteering for it.