Today I want to share with you what I think about employee benefits or employee perks and as usual, I’m going to be very straightforward and honest and tell you what I think about each of those employee benefits one by one. Treat it like the thoughts of your HR friend who has dealt with benefits at some point in their life.
I’m going to use the tier system to evaluate the most common company perks offered to the most precious full-time employees.
I’ll start with the S tier here these are the absolute must-have life-changing perks that you literally must not work without.
Then I have A tier for essential perks these are useful perks that will impact your life and would complement the above mentioned must-have S-tier perks.
Next, I have the B tier which is nice to have but if not offered it’s okay because it’s not the end of the world.
Following that, I’ve got C tier which is nice to have perks that might be useful for specific jobs.
Then I have D tier: the perks that might work for others but are not essential for me.
Health Dental and Vision Insurance
Okay let’s start with the company perk number one which is health dental and vision insurance and I will include family as well here for an additional cost
I think it’s clear and pretty much self-explanatory that in the US you shouldn’t work without health insurance. now coverage can be different and some coverages barely cover the cost of your medical bills but anyway the idea is here is that you should never work if you don’t have even basic health insurance provided by your employer
Not to mention you need to have short-term and long-term disability insurance which is included in many health insurances provided by your employer and for that reason, health insurance goes to S tier because it’s a must-have perk.
Vacations
The next employee perk is vacations or paid time off so this is also self-explanatory employees need more vacations and I don’t get why American employees have such a low number of vacation days compared to the rest of the world
Considering that HR departments design those benefits and they usually think about themselves first. By the way, you should claim more vacation days than offered initially because this is negotiable. It goes to the S tier for sure.
Flex Hours and Work From Home Options
The next employee perk is flex hours and work from home options this is a must-have today and it’s not even a perk because it costs nothing for employers to offer it. Definitely claim flex hours and work from home if you can.
Company Vehicles
So the next employee perk is providing employees with equipment needed to do the work such as mobile phones, laptops, cars, fuel cards, pens, and so on. Company cars are an appealing perk and may be a factor in deciding which employer to work for. Access to a company car allows employees greater flexibility. This can be especially helpful to those with children. If you’re a business owner it’s important to do your research and decide the best fuel card for your business. A company car can ease the commute between the office and out-of-office business appointments.
Pension contributions
Next what I’ve got for you is matching the contribution to your pension plan. invest that money wisely okay and because it’s free money that encourages you to save up for the days when you will be old and hopefully not poor this goes to A tier because this is useful.
Personal Spending Account
The next employee perk is my favourite it’s a personal spending account, I love it and this is powerful. A personal spending account should be in all organisations because there is no need to invest in tens of different benefit programs anymore. I was dealing with budgeting benefits for different levels of employees who had different benefit programs and I hated it because it was a lot of manual work full of errors however if a personal spending account is provided by the company it just eliminates the rest of the benefit programs and lets employees allocate spending to whatever they want and because of that it goes to A tier.
Tuition Allowance
Next is tuition allowance a lot of companies have started to pay for college degrees and this is not partial coverage but for the whole degree. ideally, this allowance must be also transferable to other family members if not used by the employee because I think education must be free and this is a basic human right and people should not be deprived of it if they want to study and for that reason, I put free college education into D tier which is relevant to others not me because I got my degrees already.
Utility Payments
Next is utility payments and I believe that those bills should be paid prorated, electricity water and the internet should be paid partially by employers because they already provided it to employees when they work from offices and now it’s time to provide their employees when they work from home.
Many employers just don’t like it to pay individually one by one but come on employers save a lot on rental property and they save a lot on operational costs and that’s why they have money and because of this, this employee perk goes to C tier because it’s job-specific.
Company Discounts and Company Shops
Let’s discuss company discounts and company shops. so I heard that Google has its own shop where employees can order stuff for free and because Google lets you order some stuff like keyboards and mouses and ergonomic chairs whatever equipment you need to keep you working.
Now, this is not quite a benefit but if you can find something there for your girlfriend or your kids consider it as a benefit and for that reason I put it into the D tier relevant to others not relevant to me.
Free Housing
Next what I have is free housing this one is really cool. Facebook offers free dorms to all its interns and this is a smart move but this is not relevant to me and therefore it goes to D tier ranking.
Company Stocks
The next very popular employee benefit is company stocks I think providing employees with stock options is a nice benefit but it’s quite useless because stocks are very unpredictable very hard to cash in it’s kind of a job clickbait just invest part of your earnings in those companies that easily outperform your current employer this is not financial advice just because it’s hard to sell when you want and the stock market is very volatile company stocks go to C tier.
Unlimited Vacation
Next on my list is unlimited vacation and unlimited vacations are useless and pure marketing basically this is done to keep you working without freaking out about the balance of your vacation days left and this is just necessary I think show that your employer is caring for your mental health and providing unlimited vacations, by the way, helps decrease employers liability to pay you in case you quit your job when you accumulate and use vacation days this is smart by employers and besides no one would use more than usual vacation days in a year and for that reason, it doesn’t even make it into a tier.
Now don’t judge me too hard on these benefits rankings I just wanted to bring your attention to different employee benefits so that you can easily understand the value of each of those perks. Let me know what you think below!
