Modern employees value freedom and control of their lives far more than money. As a result, simply receiving a paycheck is no longer enough to retain employee loyalty. Factors such as company culture, purpose in work, and benefit to humanity all factor into employee retention and satisfaction.
Time Value Of Money
For previous generations, company investment match, retirement, social security, and other benefits offered a chance to live mostly carefree once work is finished, but as the cost of living has risen alongside student debt, younger generations demand more as a means of seeking those same sorts of freedom and stability provided to their predecessors. Especially in the modern landscape where households include multiple full-time earners—often with different schedules—these generations are reclaiming value by seeking perks that turn the tables in favor of time and experience and help them better balance their family lives.
Time And Freedom
According to MetLife 2019 survey, more than 70 percent of companies offered remote work opportunities, and that unlimited time off was the most in-demand emerging benefit among younger workers. But are they right for your business?
Intrinsic value should be a guiding principle in determining the potential effectiveness of incentive and retention programs. If new and excellent incentives are hemorrhaging capital, but the employees don’t care about them, then your business is wasting money. Seek out time-based opportunities that resonate with your specific employee base, their lifestyles and goals. For example, utilizing internal surveys to gauge employee interest is one way to determine potential value, but be sure to include experiential questions in regard to the ways your incentives will bolster worker loyalty, happiness, and productivity.
Getting to the “why” behind your programs will help to guide future iterations.
For example, do employees want remote work because it shaves an hour off getting ready and an hour each way from their commute? By giving them back hours of their day by extending a little trust, you may enable them to spend time with their children and get a full night of sleep, meaning you will receive higher quality, more impactful deliverables. This subset of employees may also be interested in other employee retention programs that are family-oriented, such as better health insurance. For another set of employees that work remotely from cafes or travel, a great benefit may be coffee perks or a travel-reward program.
Urge Employees To Take Control Of Their Schedules
Forming and maintaining a healthy work-life balance enables employees to live fuller, happier lives, and research has shown that it contributes to enhanced productivity. Facilitate a culture that urges employees to claim control of their work schedule, discuss time off, and work alongside leadership to develop or refine incentive programs without fear of backlash. When all levels of business work in unison to develop these programs, everybody benefits. The environment of endless overtime is over. Even Microsoft has been experimenting with a four-day workweek in their Japan offices, and achieved great success with a whopping 40% boost to productivity.
Leverage Time-Based Incentives To Retain Top Talent
Though many employers have begun to offer incentives such as 'unlimited time off' in order to draw and retain the best and brightest talent, benefits have to align with the core mission of the business in order to achieve maximum impact on employees. Build incentives around the core vision of the business in order to enable a sense of higher purpose and offer the opportunity for employees to increase efficiency in their lives—efficiency that will spill over into their time at work.
Employees need to establish a balance between their work and personal lives in order to be most effective on the job. Provide a salary that allows employees to sustain their families with only one job, provide ample time off, and, where possible, extend trust and flexibility to employees by offering remote work opportunities.
You can also implement mandatory vacation minimums alongside these increased benefit offerings, a notion that helps eliminate employee guilt and sets an expectation within company culture that employees can and should take personal time in order to avoid burnout.
The combination of time, flexibility, and trust will attract top talent, foster optimal creativity and efficiency, and morph your employee-base into a high-efficiency, high-productivity, money-making machine.
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