When it comes to keeping your employees motivated – not to mention attracting new employees while keeping those you already have – benefits play an important role. But which holds more value: monetary benefits, or non-monetary?
While both can be effective, it’s worth considering the various benefits you might give your employees, and what impact they might have on the workplace.
To help you make a decision, let’s explore some examples of monetary and non-monetary employee benefits, looking at the differences between them and some of the reasons you might choose a particular type of benefit.
Monetary employee benefits
Monetary benefits are, as the name suggests, financial benefits that a company can give out to its employees. They can boost productivity in the workplace by encouraging employees to work harder. There are a number of monetary employee benefits you could utilise, all of which have pros and cons.
Monetary benefits include things like pay rises, gift cards and retention bonuses. While these benefits can be a good source of motivation, they can become expensive over time – for example, if you’re giving out retention bonuses or pay rises every few years. Because of this, you might want to think about using non-monetary benefits to motivate your employees.
With that said, monetary benefits might be more appealing to some employees than the non-monetary alternative, as some people prefer tangible rewards for their hard work. If you’re thinking about implementing benefits, consider your employees and what’s more likely to motivate them.
Non-monetary employee benefits
Non-monetary benefits are a great way to make work feel more worthwhile to your employees. Like monetary benefits, they help employees to feel that they’re valued by the company. This is helpful when it comes to increasing your business’ retention rate, as employees who feel that the company cares about them as an individual are more likely to want to keep working for you.
Examples of non-monetary employee benefits include things like the offer of extra annual leave, which could take the form of an additional day of holiday or early finishing times on certain days. You could also consider offering group life insurance.
This type of life insurance means that if anything happens to your employees, their families won’t have to worry about finances during a difficult time. While this could be viewed as a monetary benefit, the employees do not receive the money themselves, meaning they’re likely to view it as non-monetary.
Most employees will want to ensure that their families are provided for in the event of their deaths, so group life insurance is a good benefit to offer if you’re trying to encourage people to continue working for you, or if you’re trying to appeal to potential new hires.
Which type of benefit holds more value?
If you’re trying to decide between providing your employees with monetary or non-monetary benefits, you may find that non-monetary benefits hold more value in the long term. These benefits are a great way to improve your retention rates, as they encourage employee loyalty towards your business.
Receiving these benefits increases productivity throughout the workplace as, when employees know they’re being rewarded, it prompts them to work harder.
