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Thursday, March 28, 2024

8 Crucial Benefits and Perks for Remote Workers 

Keeping your employees happy is the best way to ensure you retain and attract the top talents for your company. Especially if you’re trying to save up on costs, retaining your employees costs less money than replacing them in the long run.

As an Employee Benefit News report, it costs employers 33% of a worker’s salary to hire a replacement. That’s a big chunk of resources going down the drain if you’re not too keen on investing in your employee’s well-being. 

In the same report, 12% of the respondents had issues with work-life balance, while reasons for compensation & benefit and employee well-being amount to 9% each. These data show the importance of keeping employees happy with their time well spent.

A surefire way of doing this is to have an attractive package of global benefits and compensation for your remote employees. However, looking at how things are now, traditional employee benefits are outdated for remote working conditions. 

In this article, we’ll discuss some ideas your current and potential remote employees can appreciate. We’ll throw in some of the tried and tested benefits with other unique ways you can attract and keep your employees happy.

Provide international health insurance plans

As with all full-time jobs, insurance plans are crucial in attracting and retaining employees. According to the 2018 Clutch Report, 55% of the 500 respondents say that health insurance is the most valuable benefit to them. 

This doesn’t change for remote employees as well. As they can still be classified as full-time employees just located outside the boundaries of your country, they are still entitled to it.

However, it may be difficult since your workers come from different countries. This means that your local insurance partners may not have the reach to give your remote employees their own insurance.

That’s why it’s best to partner with international insurance plans to give your remote employees what they want. You can also keep all your remote employees’ insurance consolidated in one international plan to keep everything sorted and organized. 

Ease their anxiety of financial distress when sudden health complications arise. The data doesn’t lie. Employees value insurance benefits above all else. 

Provide productivity tools

Unlike office-based employees, where tools are easily accessible in close proximity, remote workers don’t have this luxury. 

By providing laptops for their work, you give them the workstation they need.

Do they need word processing? You got it.

Do they need a device for regular research? It’s one and done with the laptop.

How about a communication tool for important meetings or presentations? It’s obvious. Laptop.

However, there might be special cases where physical documents are important for their line of work.  In this instance, you can offer to provide a printer or scanner so they won’t have to go out of their way just to print the documents.

What matters most is you provide the best tools to help your employees. Anything that can make their life easier to produce the results they want will get them far ahead of the curve.

Give a technology stipend

However, sometimes the provided productivity tools you give your employees can be limiting. Remote workers that do more than word processing, they’ll need additional tools or software to be more productive. 

For example, digital graphic artists may need to use Adobe Photoshop or a graphic pen tab to edit important company posters for an upcoming social media campaign. Video editors may need Adobe Premier Pro for that next video ad. 

When hiring in-house, these types of remote employees require more tools to function better. They’ll also need tools that are according to their preferences because their comfort in handling the tool can affect the work they produce.

By providing a technology stipend, employees can choose the most effective tools for their job. Of course, this stipend must be a conditional offer of employment so that you’ll ensure your budget is wisely spent for your company. 

Promote mental health and relaxation

Burnout is the major cause of why employees quit their jobs. 

That’s why promoting positive mental health with constant reminders to take breaks, and exercise is important. Pushing to block off time in your employees’ schedules every day to focus on themselves can be a big factor in reducing stress. 

According to a survey, as much as 40% of employees cite burnout as the main reason they left their jobs. So it’s clear that the stresses of work play a considerable role in leaving employees unhappy in their job.

Especially for remote workers who hold most of their time in their hands, switching off from work can be a difficult task to do. The goal is to keep your employees from being demotivated and strung out from the stresses of everyday work.

Push for career development and skills training

Career growth and development are important for employees. 

According to Deloitte, as much as 86% of employees would jump ship if offered more professional development opportunities. On the other hand, Gallup’s study says that as much as 65% of workers believe upskilling is very important when evaluating a new job.

This reveals how career development and skills training are crucial in attracting and retaining employees. You can do this for remote workers with online workshops, seminars, real-time demos, or online educational platforms. 

What to keep in mind here is to value your employee’s aspiration to be better. By providing the needed training for their job and more, you’ll not only make your employees happy but enrich your workforce with new skills as well.

Allot a vacation stipend

We all need an opportunity to unwind and relax every now and then. 

However, it may be different for remote employees since they don’t actually go to the same office every day. It may seem that they can take breaks any time they want, but the truth is that most remote workers carry their job with them wherever they go. 

So, taking vacations isn’t as easily done as traditional employees.

Well, your employees will love you when you take the vacation leave to the next level by providing a stipend for their vacations. 

Of course, you don’t have to throw this out to everybody. You can use this as a reward for doing good work and for those who diligently meet their KPIs, or for those who are exceptionally dedicated and loyal to your company.

Not only will this become an attractive incentive for your employees, but providing a needed vacation can also improve your employee’s outlook on their work moving forward. 

Hold team or company meetup events

Working remotely certainly has its fair share of isolation. It’s backed by a study done with the help of leading experts from Boston University, where TNW’s survey recounted that 77.2% of employees felt the most lonely when working remotely. 

That’s why it’s important to organize events face-to-face for your remote employees. Now, this can be challenging for remote workers located in other countries. However, it’s not impossible. 

One way you can start is by setting up coffee meetups for people working near each other. Get the closest employees (by proximity or not!) you have and let them have fun meeting their teams. 

If that’s not possible, you can go the more extravagant route. Fly your employees to your main office or an exotic location for a company-wide trip. 

With these types of fun events, you can definitely attract and retain employees without sweat. 

Free monthly subscriptions

One of the more unorthodox benefits you can provide your employees is free monthly subscriptions to entertainment platforms. Give them subscriptions to Netflix, Amazon Prime, Kindle, Spotify, Hulu, etc., for their fixes. You can also give them subscriptions to online magazines or paid forums online. 

While this is not unheard of, you can attract more employees by providing them the opportunity for binging the content they love. 

Help them help themselves to their guilty pleasures. It will mean a lot to your employees, believe me!

Conclusion

Developing your remote employee benefits and compensation can definitely positively impact your company. 

Remember that it’s best to know how you’ll effectively implement them for your employees to see it bear fruit. Although it may burden your pockets the larger your workforce becomes, it may prove a better alternative than spending more on rehiring and retraining new employees.

By keeping your remote employees happy, you ensure you retain your best workers while attracting top-level talent. 

Since valuable remote employees are hard to find, it’s important to invest in your people so that they, in turn, invest in you.

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