Make your offer package stand out
By Mark Di Vincenzo. Mark Di Vincenzo is a journalist with 24 years of experience and a New York Times best-selling author.
So you found an incredible candidate for an important job that you desperately need to fill. Congratulations!
What do you offer? All the obvious things make sense: An attractive salary, good health insurance coverage, and plenty of vacation time. But to land a "big fish" these days, that often isn’t enough.
So what are the perks and benefits that employees say they like the most these days? The following comes from websites that track what employees have to say about their employers.
Flexible work schedules
This tops the list. It includes anything from job sharing, to working from home, to working flex-time, which allows employees to put their eight hours in a time slot different from the standard 9-to-5.
9/80
This allows employees to work 80 hours during a nine-day period, giving them every other Friday off work. Chevron, BP, Raytheon, and Lockheed Martin are a few companies that offer it to at least some of their employees. Some only allow it during the summer months, giving their employees more opportunities for three-day weekends.
Company stock
Who says there’s no such thing as a free lunch? Some publicly traded companies give new employees stock units, which after two or three years, become stock. Many companies also give their employees stock or stock options as an end-of-the-year bonus or when employees are promoted. Employees also love being able to buy stock at a discount. Intuit, for example, offers its employees a 15% discount.
Fitness centers
Large companies, such as Valero Energy and Altria Group, attract employees with their on-site fitness centers. Smaller companies pay for a private gym membership for employees, who tend to use the facilities anywhere between eight and 12 times a month. Employees get a free gym membership if they use it a lot, and companies win because fit employees are less likely to get sick.
Reimbursements
Many companies, including Oracle, Bausch & Lomb, and WellPoint, reimburse employees for tuition, adoption, and relocation expenses.
College scholarships
Altria Group, Well Point, and other mostly large companies, give scholarships to some of the children of their employees, or to other worthy students.
Employee discounts
Many companies, including all of the major car makers, offer employees discounts on the products and services they sell. This perk saves BMW employees thousands of dollars.
Movie tickets
Some companies, including Eli Lilly, have regular draws for free tickets to movies, professional sports, concerts, and events such as ice shows and circuses.
Coffee and water
Bristol-Myers Squibb points out on its website that it offers its employees free coffee and water. It all adds up.
Before you make offer a benefits package, ask the kind of questions that'll allow you to figure out what’s important to the person you want to hire.
The owner of a financial services firm in Virginia recently lost a great candidate because she didn’t do that. “I played up our 401(k) plan, which my other employees say is our best benefit,” the owner said, “but this candidate was 26 years old and she wasn’t thinking about saving for retirement. I later found out she valued other things, but I didn’t know that because I didn’t ask the right questions.”
TribeHR wants to help you to build the best team. For more great tips, check out our Startup HR 101 video series.
