If you are reading this to get a detailed overview of workplace culture design, employee satisfaction or engagement strategy, then this is not it. All of those topics are rich with details and research, therefore I would recommend starting with an HRM book to understand the drivers of human behaviour and the surrounding elements influencing it.

This post is focused on offering you 4 examples of different workplace perks and walking you through what they influence.

Benefit

 as an advantage you get from a company in addition to the money you earn. For example, health insurance, life insurance, stock options, paid time off, etc. We can categorise those as things that employees need.

Perk

 as a bonus that companies offers to show they value employees and stand out from competitors. It most likely would be aimed to support employees to perform better in their position or create a specific workplace environment. We can categorise those as things that employees want.

Addressing equity and inclusion

Having a diverse group of employees itself is not a win or success when there are no real processes or ways to ensure a sense of belonging that is authentic to the diverse workforce.

For example, a company that is proud of its cultural diversity and/or offer global mobility programs could implement perk #1 Flexible Public Holidays. As your employees come from so many different nationalities and religions, therefore it is powerful to note what is celebrated and important your office locations do not correlate with being important to the whole workforce. For an inclusive and flexible approach, you could offer X amount of public holidays for flexible use. This ensures that employees can decide for themselves if to utilise it during Ramadan, their home country's Independence Day celebration, Diwali or something else. 

Powering productivity

n: the state or quality of being productive.

Is it really? Let's get it clear what productivity is not. It is not doing more with less. Neither is it a constant state. Also, it is not a number of completed tasks or accomplishments. Instead, it is a tool that many employees have no access for using.

I am calling it a tool, as it does not magically happen when summoning. There is a limit of how productive a person can be within the limits the environment has created for them. Productivity is as simple as empowering people to create a work environment which brings forward their possibility to control distractions and find their flow.

Perk #2 Focus Day that is a globally agreed specific day that company removes the biggest blocker for flow: having to switch context due to row of meetings. By creating a unified agreement on when people are expected to leave a day free of meetings, it creates a safe space for people to actually focus on all the things every role has outside of meetings - would it be executing, putting together a project plan, drafting communication, editing, designing, writing code, analyzing etc.

Sacred self-development

Why have unlimited PTO programs failed in most organizations? Because it is a value, but not a virtue. Meaning companies promote the idea of taking time off, but they do not support figuring out how is a person supposed to manage it next to their workload. The same is for self-development.

Did you know that lack of career development and learning opportunities is the third most crucial reason for modern-day employees to resign from their job? In fact, career development opportunities are the second-most significant driver of employee engagement. While you are offering learning budgets, access to learning platforms and sharing ideas for workshops to take part in, then you might be overlooking the biggest blocker for people not taking part in self-development. It is a lack of dedicated learning time.

Perk #3 Dedicated Learning Time as an official time-off type with a clear lead-by-example global approach showing that it is encouraged and celebrated to take time for self-development. To fight retention and create a work environment that is consistent, you need to make global decisions. By doing it you make self-development more accessible and not dependent on the direct manager’s interpretation of priorities and approval.

Give them a microphone

We do not know what we do not know. Making decisions without knowing leads us to playing “pin the donkey” with our employees - not actually impactful nor necessary effective. I am definitely not a fan of that game and encourage also you to find better ways.

Recently I was reminded of the magic of simple steps. I was having a 1:1 conversation with a fellow people manager with who we discussed the importance of celebrating team and individual success. They brought out that they are working on figuring out ways how to recognise good work and to highlight it in a way that it would be gratifying, but that it is hard to predict what would be the best way. I redirected the question to them and asked how they like their success to be celebrated. That question prompted a great open discussion which led to idea generation. I followed with a simple "Has any of your leaders ever asked you about how you would like to be recognised?" and the answer was no, never. I turned the question around "Have you ever asked from your direct reports what does recognition mean to them, and how would they describe good recognition and celebration of their success?".

We as people or organization leaders, do not have to pull rabbits out of a hat and try to magically predict what is expected. We have the opportunity to make room for employees to have access to the microphone, so they could speak for themselves. Perk #4 Pitch.

I hope if you are reading this, you have already reached the stage of understanding the importance of planning. Would your planning be quarterly, twice per year or annual - an operating plan with budgeting should take place. Why not create space for your employees to enter with their pitch for 1 change or new thing that the company should implement next year for your global locations? Clearly, some drafted general rules should be made and communicated on behalf of the company and give a financial limit. Let your employees surprise you about what actually matters to them and if they could, what would they change.

And final disclaimer: I am not trying to imply that employee engagement or satisfaction issues could be resolved by any singular new initiatives. All well-implemented initiatives are a step forward, but they must be accompanied by a clearly focused value proposition and an analysed goal. Offering random perks that do not address the actual pain points just for the sake of doing the same as other competitors will only make you look like a copycat or indicate a lack of strategy.