ORGANIZATIONAL STRUCTURES, MANAGEMENT & PROCEDURES

Boost motivation by giving your employees benefits and gift cards

Monetary

Estimated budget: see the table

Employee benefits are a crucial pillar of the employee experience and – when properly done – they can provide a key advantage during recruiting and retaining talent, that it reflects on the good management of the company. An employee who is happier and has fewer thoughts certainly works better and he/she is more productive. The time spent at work can absorb a lot of time in the day and having to manage personal and family needs in short time frames surely becomes a source of stress, which worsens the quality of one’s life, as well as, work performance. A well-rounded and meaningful benefits program offers employees more tangible appreciation than a monetary reward once a year. A well-done benefits program shows employees that they are cared about and that their employer is listening to them. This brings more motivation to workers. Motivated employees can lead to increased productivity and allow an organisation to achieve higher levels of output. Without a motivated workplace, companies could be placed in a very risky position. Some example of really appreciated benefits can be found in the table.

How to choose the right benefit?

Here there are some useful steps to implement a new employee benefit (or changing an old one).

1. Deciding what benefits to offer. You have to consider which benefits your employees might find more valuable. At the beginning is important to be sure everyone agree with the decision. Take the time to have your benefit proposal evaluated from every level of the organization. Researchers found the benefits employees want most are health benefits, followed by the paid time off.
2. Determine the budget. Based on the type of benefits you provide, you will need to set up a budget. The least expensive benefits are one-time items like a company T-shirt or employee pizza party. The most expensive (and valuable to employees) are health-related benefits like medical insurance and health savings plans.
3. Confirm the details with your legal advisor. It is important to take into account the rules that govern the benefits’ implementation laws. Ensure that the new benefit is compliant with federal, state, and local law. Also, find out if there are tax implications in case the new benefit will impact employees’ paychecks.
4. Align other company policies and procedures. Sometimes benefits can impact another existing benefit or policy. That doesn’t necessarily mean it’s bad, but organizations need to be aware. It’s possible, for example, that other organizational policies and procedures will need a little updating at the same time.
5. Develop a benefits communications plan. Once the company about the benefit it wants to offer, it has to share this information. It’s time to plan the best way to share it. Consider a variety of communication mediums: online, in-person, and paper.
6. Conduct a post-implementation brief. Once the benefit is fully implemented, don’t forget to do a short brief. It is not necessary to be long or elaborate. Simply ask two questions: What went well? And What would we do differently next time? This helps future implementations.

Necessary human resources and Estimated budget

The variety of benefits that companies can offer to employees is extremely wide and the necessary resources to implement them change according the benefit chosen. There are benefits that need less economic effort and resources, such as internal courses to develop the competences of the team. On the other side, there are benefits that need high initial economic effort and resources, such as company nursery. Every company can offer different benefit to its own employees according its financial resources.

Benefits can take also the form of prizes paid, for example, to the “employee of the month” (the most efficient worker) in the form of cash or bonus gift card. This type of benefit must be formalised through an internal evaluation plan and implemented with organizational schemes that allow employees to be involved in the processes of improvement and innovation of the company’s performance. This kind of bonus can be given, for example every 3 or 6 months or once per year, according the kind of business.

Expected impact

If employees feel appreciated at work through rewarding benefits, they will be more motivated and perform higher volume of better quality work. A study by the Bersin Group revealed that productivity at companies with good benefits and incentive schemes was 14% higher than those companies without, with the potential for up to a 43% improvement in productivity. A unique, interesting benefits programme makes employees feel valued and willing to give back to their employer. Employee motivation is highly important for every company and it can be reach thanks to the benefits.

To sum up, thanks to benefits it is possible to:

Increase employee commitment: when employees are motivated to work, they will generally put their best effort in the tasks that are assigned to them.
Improve employee satisfaction: employee satisfaction is important for every company because this can lead towards a positive growth for the company.
Foster employee development: the motivation given by benefits can facilitate workers to reach their personal goals, and facilitate the self-development of an individual.

Improve employee efficiency: an employee’s efficiency level is not only based on their abilities or qualifications. For the company to get the very best results, an employee needs to have a good balance between the ability to perform the task given and willingness to want to perform the task. This balance can lead to an increase of productivity and an improvement in efficiency.

Example(s) of prior application

Company name: BENDING SPOONS

Number of employees: 85
Location: Milan, Italy

How the WPI was implemented?

Bending Spoons started in 2013 in Copenhagen, Denmark, as a collaboration between five young friends (4 Italians and one Polish) with extensive expertise in business, technology, and design. In 2014 Bending Spoons moved to Milan, looking to build a highly-talented pro tech team. The company has an almost flat hierarchical structure, the average age is around 30 years. It is composed by a team of excellent programmers from around the world, it periodically organized collective company retreats in places like Thailand, Australia or Argentina. “We invest much more resources in selecting first and then in trying to develop and make the people who work for us happy, it is the most important asset we have – says the founder – they are what has allowed us to succeed in an extremely competitive market and competitive”. This innovative company offers a variety of benefits to its employees, some of that are: provision of computer and mobile telephone to each employee, healthy lunch, training courses and company retreats around the world. The healthy lunches are provided by “Foorban”, a company specialised in healthy working lunch, that gives the possibility to choose every day among different kind of menu suitable for different needs: Balanced, energy, detox, healthy, sport and gourmet. Once per year they organise company retreat in exotical place to improve the interaction among employees and the working environment, as conguece. Also, during this retreat many brainstorming activities are performed in order to reach new ideas for successful business.

Results obtained

Thanks to this attention to its employees, the company is sure to have well-motivated and happy workers. In fact, Bending Spoons in few years has become a world leader in apps field and all the best programmers in the world want to work for this company. Today the company has 120 million downloads and produces about 20 products with an average of 200,000 new users per day. Bending Spoons today is the ninth company in the world for the number of applications downloaded, first in Europe, ahead of big names like Netflix or Twitter.

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Reference (website):
https://bendingspoons.com/