9min
Employee benefits say a lot about your organization. Beyond helping you attract and retain top talent, they are a reflection of your company values and culture. Since the start of COVID-19, companies have pivoted their benefits to encompass a larger, more creative and often virtual set of benefits. Here's a look inside 10 companies offering uncommon (and awesome!) benefits:
10. Wine Allowance
"Our company provides Wine Allowance to our employees for our monthly gathering that happens every last Friday of the month. This initiative started in 2014 as the company believes that it is essential to give time for its employees to unwind to reduce their work-related stress and fatigue. It is also a great way to develop socialization among our workforce which contributes to the betterment of our company culture." - Oliver Baker, Co-founder, Intelivita
9. Travel Allowance
"Each person gets an allowance every 6 months and the money should be enough to cover a 7-day trip in the country. This is one of the ways we encourage employees to explore other places and spend time outdoors. Everybody loves it and the only condition is to share some of the photos from the trip so that we can all enjoy them. "
- Torben Lonne, Co-Founder & Chief Editor at Divein
8. Uncommon Holidays"One of the things that we do to help our employees pause and take time for important things is to offer some uncommon holidays. Like many companies now, we offer PTO on election day and Juneteenth, but we also offer a day off in March to celebrate our founding so that we can all collectively celebrate what our start-up has grown to over the years. "
- Jessica Day, Co-Founder, IdeaScale
7. National Park Pass
"We offer all our employees passes to national parks. As outdoor enthusiasts, we think it is important to encourage our employees to take part. Not only is this a great perk, but gives them first-hand experience and knowledge in our industry."
- Ravi Parikh, CEO, RoverPass
6. Gaming Subscriptions
"I offer gaming subscriptions for my remote team so that they can connect with their colleagues in this manner. I have found it to be immensely popular and beneficial throughout this year, allowing my global team to feel more connected with one another, particularly through this difficult time. "
- Andrew Taylor, Director, Net Lawman
"I’ve always been aware that summer can be a difficult time for our employees who are also parents as juggling work and childcare isn’t easy. We’ve now put in place a summer camp for employee’s children which provides childcare and fun activities during two of the summer months, allowing employees to carry on working without huge childcare costs. For non-parents, we offer discounts on train and air travel."
- Dima Suponau, CEO & Founder, Number for Live Person
4. Home Assistance
"Ever since we've switched to remote work, we tried to go above and beyond to provide our employees with as much support as they need. For this reason, we thought of some unconventional ways of helping them.
First of all, some of our workers are designated handymen who can lend a helping hand with any home repairs. Secondly, the coffee machines we have at our offices were made available for rent for our employees to enjoy their favourite coffee at home. Last but not least, our designers can plan your home office to make it as comfortable as possible.."
- Jack Zmudzinski, Senior Associate, Future Processing
"With COVID-19 upon us, this is a great time to have employees take online classes. Our organization created a "Grow Your Craft" fund, where we give employees $1,000 to spend on an online course of their choice. The only requirement is that it has to connect to the functional work area that the employee is in right now. We currently have employees enrolled in courses doing Google Analytics, Google Adwords, SQL, Data Analysis, and more. It has been a huge hit across the company with 80% adoption so far!"
- Kevin Miller, CEO & Founder, The Word Counter
2. Debt Consolidation"It's very important to us that everyone has a chance to get out from under oppressive debt. That's why one of our benefits is debt consultation and consolidation for all of our employees. This benefit covers debt up to $10,000 for consolidation and at any amount for counseling. Nearly every employee takes advantage of this benefit - even those who've come to us as debt or financial advisors. No one is immune to debt. We live in a country that thrives off of it. It's almost impossible to establish an existence without incurring some form of debt. So we feel this benefit will always be extremely useful and could be life-changing for some people."
- Jake Hill, CEO, DebtHammer
1. Group Therapy Sessions"On Fridays, we have group therapy sessions with a professional, during which any employee can talk about whatever is weighing them down. Through these sessions, we’ve talked, we’ve argued, we’ve vented and, ultimately, we’ve bonded. Employees also have the opportunity to schedule one-on-one sessions with our in-house therapist. We find that this technique works because therapy helps our employees to stay motivated and positive, which has truly transformed our workplace environment. When employees are happier, our performance is better."
- Khurram Suhrwardy, CEO, Caption Easy
