Every company we’re working with at Holistic is desperate to keep employees. In the modern workforce, as we ride the wave of the great resignation and all the chaos in the world right now. Benefits and perks are a key way that companies are trying to distinguish themselves from one another, to compete for and retain talent. But benefits and perks can be expensive, and oftentimes these resources are deployed poorly.

Put simply, nobody gives a fuck about their 401k anymore. Not really. If you ask an employee under 40 years old if their 401k match gets them excited, they’ll probably say no – if you’re 26 years old and you haven’t been to the movies in 18 months, money that you’ll get when you’re 59 years old might as well be monopoly money – it’s imaginary, fake, non-existent.

Here’s the good news though: There are many ways that companies can show up for employees with “perks” and “benefits” that have not traditionally been considered a benefit, but should be packaged and marketed as such. Here’s three general ideas, along with some specific examples of things a company might do.

Diversity, Equity and Inclusion as an Employee Benefit

People want to work for diverse, equitable, just and inclusive organizations these days, more than ever. Consistently on our surveys, this is one of the top things we see. This really matters for employees, far more than many traditional benefits do. Some ways of doing this:

• Set DEI goals as an organization

• Have a transparency page that shows your statistics

• Have employee resource groups and listening sessions for employees of different demographic backgrounds

• Add in DEI as part of each individual employee’s performance evaluation

• Have “DEI interviews” as part of your interview process and use it as a way of involving more people in the hiring process

A Platform and a Voice as an Employee Benefit

Our companies have voices and platforms in ways that our employees never will. One of the most valuable gifts that we can offer is to temporarily elevate the voices of our employees and let them speak alongside, on behalf of, or in place of our organizations. Holistic has had a lot of success with two recent newsletters in which we opened things up to our employees to use our platform for their voice, and it worked wonderfully.

Examples:

• Newsletter takeover, where each employee gets a chance to say what they want to about an important issue.

• Social media takeover, where employees can share information about their work, their day, their lives.

• Using our social media platform to celebrate employee success on a personal level -- new babies, side hustle accomplishments, etc. 

• Building a communications approach that allows for employee sentiment to be considered and incorporated into public facing communications -- like letting your DEI committee build your transparency page, or having your Black Employees ERG write a statement that is conveyed from the company.

Friendship as an Employee Benefit

Having a good friend at work is absolutely one of the key reasons people choose to stay, and ultimately prosper, at their jobs. Friendships that are made through work are absolutely something that people are looking for, and while we can’t promise an employee that they’ll make a good friend at work, we can offer a friendship-conducive environment. We might:

• Use a technology like “Donuts” to “collide” employees together to get to know one another.

• Have frequent company-sponsored events (not always drinking!) that take place outside of the office and are designed for employees to get to know one another

• Intentionally place new hires onto many different projects so they get to meet and work with a lot of people

• Ask questions about friendships being made at work on employee surveys and report data to employees as part of the application process

• Give people opportunities to celebrate one another at the workplace -- like a traveling trophy that is delivered each week for an outstanding individual effort. 

These ideas are just a few that will help you meet your employees where they are, without spending too much additional money. In fact, all of these ideas are basically free, and they are accessible immediately, and will offer profound advancements in terms of retention and employee wellbeing.