A few months ago we posted a poll around company benefits and 33% of our community wanted flexible working hours.

Many companies are now offering flexible working options but there are still many businesses who are struggling to entice their workers back into the office. We have noticed that employers are starting to look at other types of benefits which will encourage people to get back into the office more.

After asking our community and speaking to a number of our clients, here are the top 3 ways you can encourage your employees to get back into the office.

1. Contributing to your employee’s overall mental and physical health

With the rising costs of living, there’s even more reason why employees might want to work from home and save money. Whether it’s saving money on the commute or even on gym memberships, if employers can help by contributing to some of these costs it can really entice employees back into the office.

It’s important to encourage each of your employees to spend time focusing on their overall mental and physical health. In our most recent poll we found that 40% of our community would like their gym membership to be paid for. By offering to pay towards the gym or organising regular yoga classes or “fun runs”, you can contribute to your employees' overall wellbeing whilst also helping them with their cost of living.

2. Casual Dress Code

A study by StitchMine revealed that 87% of employees believe having a more relaxed dress code in the office improves morale and 47% believe it improves productivity.

Since the pandemic many people are used to working from home in their loungewear and it can be very off putting having to go back into a corporate office setting and dressing to “impress” each day.

Unless your employees have important face to face client meetings, having a casual dress code when they are just working from the office, could encourage more employees to come back.

If this is something you would like to introduce you could start by setting clear guidelines on what your business deems appropriate and inappropriate workwear attire. By setting boundaries you can give employees more freedom but still keep it professional.

3. Case by case benefits rather than a one size fits all

When it comes to employee benefits there are many platforms that offer a personalised approach, it might be that a benefit for one employee might not be right for another. For instance, you may organise a “bring your dog to work day” but some employees may not have a dog, or you might want to offer on site child care options but not all employees have kids.

Thanks Ben is one that many companies are now using to give their employees a range of choice when it comes to their benefits. Your company sets a budget and lets the employee spend what they want; this scheme replaces manual benefit allowances and offers maximum choice.

“With Juno” is also a very popular health and well-being perk that has hundreds of services to choose from. Employees are given Juno points (costing companies roughly £45 per month per employee) which employees can put towards a range of well-being services from yoga classes to deep tissue massages.

Whichever option you go for when it comes to employee benefits, it’s always best to speak to your team and hear what matters most to them and what they would like to see in their benefits package.

As always, if you’d like any advice feel free to reach out to us and we can see how we can help you.