What would you answer if someone asks you why your corporate culture is great? If you only describe a list of your above-standard employee benefits, you should think about it again. Free food, animals in the workplace and other similar benefits are really great, but employee benefits and corporate culture are not the same. This fact was covered in an interesting article on hrcommunication.com.
Corporate culture includes all work-related standards and values distinguishing your company from the competition. That is how you should sell it to both job applicants and current employees. An HR professional who cannot perceive employee benefits in the context of the whole corporate culture, builds the company on nice-to-have things instead of values. Therefore, what should you know about employee benefits?
-
Employees do not stay in a company because of benefits, but because of people, products and work.
-
Employee benefits that are great for one person, may be a problem for another. Do you really want to lose a great expert just because he is allergic to dog hair and you want to come up with something great like the possibility of bringing dogs to the workplace?
-
Think about whether you really want people to work for you just because you offer free food. It would be better if they were interested in your products and growing your business.
-
Employee benefits do not guarantee higher employee performance. They can be engaging, but they will not turn average workers into performance stars.
It certainly does not mean that you should ignore employee benefits. However, do not build your corporate culture or recruitment on the benefits. The correct procedure is the opposite - first determine your values, then build your corporate culture on them and choose employee benefits based on the culture.
-kk-