Benefits That Count: Beyond Salary Increases

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Many companies are still hurting from the recent recession. The current recovery is sluggish and uncertain.

If you believe that your facility won’t be able to afford staff increases this year, but you’re concerned that you’ll lose great employees because of it, read below for some benefits you may be able offer staff members to help keep them engaged and happy being in your employ. Several of these ideas are free or low cost.

  • Can you offer free snacks, sodas or lunch to your staff members? Even free soda, juice or bottled water in the lunchroom fridge is greatly appreciated.  If you have a cafeteria, could you offer free or subsidized lunches to your employees?
  • All-you-can-eat free snacks – cookies, chips, pretzels – in the break room also are a great perk to employees.  If you cannot afford this every day, how about 1 day a week or 1 Friday a month?
  • Instead of offering a combination of vacation time and sick time off, why not combine the two and offer PTO, allowing the employee to take the time for whatever it’s needed.
  • Why not bring in free lunch-time speakers on topics of interest to employees? Topics could range from financial and retirement planning, college planning, safety experts, attorneys, etc.
  • Why not arrange with a local auto repair service to provide regular maintenance services (oil changes, etc.) on site?  Another option would be to arrange with a mobile car wash business to provide car wash/detail services on site?
  • Could you offer a small monthly stipend ($100 or so) to those to employees who take public transit to get to work?  If that is too expensive, how about a monetary benefit to those employees who carpool on Earth Day?
  • What about paid time off to care for a newborn/newly adopted child or ill family  member? You’d have to come up with solid parameters, of course (possibly akin to FMLA) but this could be a huge perk to your employees.
  • Would it be possible to offer month-long sabbaticals for those employees who have worked with you for five years or more?
  • Why not have free raffles that allow employees to win free movie passes, gas cards, concert tickets?
  • Are you offering a good employee referral program? Make it worth an employee’s time – say a minimum of $200 when someone an employee referred starts work and $500 if the person sticks around for a year.
  • Finally, perhaps the least expensive but quite powerful “benefit” you could provide is a simple but eloquent thank you. Why not send a handwritten thank you note to an employee’s home when you’ve seen him or her do a great job? This could work for long-standing great work as well as those times when a worker goes above and beyond.

What about you? Has your facility come up with inexpensive but effective benefits? Tell us about them here.

Meanwhile, we hope you’ve bookmarked our Snelling Medical Blog and that you’re returning each week to read more for strategies and tips to help your facility succeed.

NOTE:  A full-color downloadable PDF is available.