But the reality is that many SMBs are wasting their budget by offering perks no one wants or even uses. And this isn't just a waste of your money but it’s detrimental to the company culture too.
If this feels all too familiar, let's take a look at five mistakes SMBs are making in relation to employee perks.
Setting and forgetting
Most businesses put together a benefits package, launch it then forget it. In the meantime its not checked upon and simply forgotten until once again you remember it exists. But in the years in between the workforce has likely changed and what worked then isn't applicable or even needed now. It might be that your staff were once young single employees who now are married with kids or mortgages etc. Their priorities will be vastly different to when they first started and this means your benefit packages should have changed with them. If you’ve not updated your package to meet your team's needs youre falling behind.
Poor Communication
This is really common. Employees consistently undervalue their benefits packages because they don't actually fully understand what is and isn't included in it. If your benefits are a one page overview document rolled out in onboarding it may as well not exist. You need clear, regular communication, not just once per year reminders. You need to revise how you present the benefits into simple documents so people can easily find what they need and know the important details at a glance, without reading through long boring paragraphs
Overlooking Tax Benefits
Many SMBs default to cash based incentives like bonuses and pay rises without considering that salary sacrifice schemes can be externally more cost effective for both the business and the employee.
Electric vehicle benefits are a good example of this. Looking at The Electric Car Scheme examples illustrate how employees can make a real monthly saving on a car while the business simultaneously reduces its national insurance contributions. These aren't complicated to implement, but a surprising number of employers overlook them entirely in favour of straightforward pay increases that cost more and deliver less.
One Size Fits All Thinking
A gym membership means very little to someone working long hours with an even longer commute and a family waiting for them at home. Offering childcare support for a workforce that's mostly single employees with no dependents is also redundant. You need to be working with your employees and looking at what benefits they need and what will genuinely be useful based on their needs. For some, it could be that they will benefit from the gym scheme other might be in the market for help with healthcare costs.
Overlooking this as an option for blanket option isn't going to work and will just be detrimental to what you're trying to achieve.
