The Covid-19 pandemic has created an enormous disruption and a unique set of challenges for business around the world. For the HR team, the highly volatile markets that are likely to result will create pressure to both attract and retain high quality employees, especially affect high skill and technology industries.
Large scale upheavals will lead employees to reassess their career goals and business disruption will create opportunities to attract new talent. For both of these reasons, it’s a good time to review and update the employee benefits offered by your business.
Hard Benefits vs Soft Benefits
In general, employee benefits can be broken down into hard and soft benefits. The soft benefits being culture-based benefits and the hard benefits being cash and kind.
Culture-based benefits such as work-life balance, opportunities for advancement and recognition/reward systems are important, but the cultural changes that are necessary will usually be long term objectives. Organisational cultural change is never an overnight operation.
The hard benefits always start with salary and there is no avoiding that reasonable market salaries are necessary for happy employees. Once that’s done, what comes next?
The Cost of Commuting
One area that is often overlooked is commuting benefits. Long commutes can have a significant impact on employee retention and are a major indicator of turnover, especially for new staff. Long commutes (>45 minutes) also affect employee wellness and have been shown to contribute to absenteeism, illness and even divorce rates.
The problem can be addressed in a number of ways, from telecommuting and flexible hours to shared mobility and transport incentives but the first step needs to be a clear understanding of the problem. Establishing commute patterns, identifying specific roles that are flexible and understanding employee motivations for long commutes can help you make more meaningful decisions.
CMaaS is a corporate focused mobility provider that designs a custom-tailored solution for each client. The first step in this is the CMaaS Blueprint, a futureproofed but realistic design vision of your corporate transport and mobility based on your business, your location and your employees. This Blueprint is yours to keep and provides you with all the data you need to make the right decisions for your team.