It is not just about Wages – What More do Employees Demand in the New Now?

Employees’ benefits – businesses’ new competitive advantage

In “the new now”, the economy is showing sign of better recovery with strong post-recession growth rate. The jobs are returning to the market, meaning that workers will receive various attractive offers from competitors, which generates a massive wave of switching jobs. According to a recent survey by McKinsey, there are more than 25% of workers trying to find new jobs post-pandemic. Moreover, in April, a survey of 4.000 workers in Britain claimed that 60% expressed their plan of changing jobs after the pandemic ends.

Following numerous major changes brought about by Covid-19, not only about how much wages or annual leaves will they get, employees’ demands on benefits, especially Gen Z, have been adjusted to mental and physical well-being as well.

Employee benefits have since become much more than a simple add-on nor an axillary element. In fact, it has already become a competitive advantage with clear impact for businesses. Businesses can straightforwardly retain talents, motivate employees and attract numerous potential candidates by building an effective welfare package.

New setting requires new employee benefits

These days, employees pay more attention to direct benefits to themselves, such as mental well-being, physical health, promotion opportunities and even volunteering activities that contribute to society. Leaders and HR departments play an important role in planning, implementing new benefits, listening to employees’ aspiration and adjusting benefits accordingly.
To kick-off competitive capability, beside traditional methods, businesses can try implementing brand new welfare package, including:

• Mental Health Benefit: encourage healthy working experience by building supportive culture that absolutely eliminates exploitation, bullying or favoritism. Furthermore, businesses can introduce meditation classes, orientation activities… to employees which contribute to improving mental health of them.
• Physical Health Benefit: establish various extracurricular activity clubs, sport clubs; cover gym fees, organize outdoor activities and internal sport events in order to encourage employees work out and improve their health. Moreover, by having various clubs in the business can help enhance cohesion and integration of employees.
• F&B Benefit: Create an office environment with all the comforts such as: pantry, food court, drinks, medicine chest. These initiatives have been applied in most businesses, but local businesses, or start-ups still haven’t paid enough attention to these. 
• Create opportunities for employees to participate in volunteering activities: encourage employees contributing to society with Social Justice PTO (Paid Time Off). This method not only is beneficial to employees but also improve brand image and exhibit business CSR.
• Improve employee’s personal capability: A clear development path is one of the perquisites to retain employees, especially at the management levels. Businesses need to define skill gaps and build a methodological learning program that fits with each employees’ personal development needs, especially in foreign languages in the current globalized economy. Various firms have adopted several technologies to enhance learning experience of employees. For example, English speaking application ELSA Speak – is being adopted by various businesses due to AI technology that helps employees fix their pronunciations, accumulate vocabulary and improve speaking ability. This application can also design learning content based on industries, and support overview management tools that enable businesses to evaluate, assess employees’ progress, calculate ROI and investment efficiency.

Upgrade businesses’ welfare package – What should you mind?

While improving and innovating new welfare package is the necessary trend in the new now, leaders should consider these factors so as to properly adjust the changes to suit actual circumstances of the businesses.

• Plan budget according to business’ capability: Deciding to upgrade welfare packing will cost the business a large amount. Leaders should carefully consider business current financial statement to choose the right plan that optimizes productivity while saving a lot of resources.
• Conduct a survey to know what employees truly need: Employees will have different needs depending on the positions, industries. Leaders can conduct a survey in form of questionnaires, feedback box or direct conversation to learn more about what employees truly need.
• Discuss straightforwardly and get feedback from HR team: After building plan to improve welfare package, leaders should discuss with their subordinates – those who directly affected by this plan – to modify, or find the best implementation.

Soure: English speaking application ELSA Speak