COVID and frustrated, and sometimes very unhappy, workers are rewriting the benefit rulebook for employers. For the last few years workers have been focused on benefits that help their well-being, their mental health and their family life.
Adzuna is job finder company. Its data science boss, James Neave recently took a detailed look at workplace benefits. He found it important for employers to stay ahead of the game and advertise such benefits.
“If your offerings and perks have real value, it only makes sense to shout about it,” Neave said. “You’re going to get people more interested and increase your applicants, so it makes complete sense from a commercial perspective.”
He noted that Adzuna’s research has a “dramatic” increased in benefits that push health and wellness, family planning, tuition reimbursement, volunteering and flexibility rising over the last three years.
So it may be important for employers to advertise such benefits when looking for the best candidates for a position.
“If we look at maternity and paternity leave, for example, those numbers are quite substantial and have shown a nice growth trend over the past few years,” he noted. “Statistically it’s good evidence that potential employees will see this and recognize and assign value to it, because companies have decided to jump on the train and offer the same benefits.”
Neave also suggests companies list its benefits on the organization’s culture and values pages. He even suggests firms post pictures of happy employees participating in events.
And — almost most importantly — employers need to listen to current employees and, benefit-wise, see what seems to be working for them.
“With all these benefits, it’s important for companies to understand that it’s only ever going to be a percentage of candidates or existing workforce who will be excited by it or use it,” Neave added. “But it’s a cumulative effect. The data is showing the standard now evolving to include some benefits that are a little surprising. [These] can make your workplace and the company environment a more compelling and attractive place to be.”
Adzuna says these are the top five benefits being demanded by potential employees and current employees in 2023.
- Health and wellness: In 2020 postings that mentioned free therapy and counseling benefits, mental health benefits and extra days off rose from single digits to thousands of postings in 2023. Gym memberships are also up in posts. More companies are also giving birthdays off.
- Family planning: Maternity and family leave benefits are the second highest increase in job benefits seen in listings. Add to that more postings with benefits in fertility help like egg freezing and in vitro fertilization (IVF).
- Tuition reimbursement: This is the biggest increase of them all with more than 500,000 postings offering this kind of perk in 2023. In 2020 the number was 139,115. Benefits go from an average of $5,250 for undergrad work to $10,500 for graduate degrees.
- Volunteer days: A lot of employees are looking to work for a socially responsible company. Adzuna’s research found most of these kinds of posts are found in finance, accounting and sales. The company also found that 76% of millennials want to work for a company with social and environmental commitments.
- Flexibility: This one goes without saying. Perks from four-day work weeks to work from home, or anywhere but the office, has been growing significantly for the last three years. A report from Slack says 94% of employees want flexibility where they work and 80% say flexibility will determine where they will work.
Source link: Employee Benefit News — http://bit.ly/3Kxv4EV
