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5 min read

Balancing competing needs for your HR budget is tricky, and at times when you want to do something you need to be able to do so either at very low cost levels, or even for no money at all.

Chances are, you’ve got a few senior-level team members checking and double checking that budget spreadsheet a little closely nowadays. It can be a challenge to think up employee benefits that don’t break the bank, but it’s not impossible.

Get your CFO (and your employees) on your side with a few of these ideas:

The Freebie

This one is simple. And better yet, it’s free (to your employees). Set up  an employee reward and recognition program. This can be easy to do, and means that you create give your staff the power to say thank you and well done to colleagues, to their manager or peers. By opening up this tool to staff you instantly make recognition a powerful tool that can touch every employee with immediate effects.

The power of a well designed recognition program with thank you eCards  can be such that a manager can thank a whole team, a CEO can recognise sales efforts or service excellence with just a few clicks of a button. You can also be a little creative and use the eCards to bring your company values to life: 

push-boundaries-ecard-new

The second idea is on the same theme, recognition, this time is slightly more formal, and is a Thank You Awards program. Working on the principles of recognition a Thank You Awards program could utilise the same tools as the e-cards and you could have public nominations which would then be judged by an independent group who would then select the winners for that all important public praise. We do this through our Thank You Awards, which are a big hit every quarter with our employees. Your winners can be recognised publicly - we do so at our quarterly all-staff meeting so all employees (not just their managers) understand how teamwork makes the dream work (another of our eCards!). You can see how much it makes them smile: 

 

 

The one that you need to spend a little on

At the heart of every rewards program you need that little extra, that magic something that touches everyone.  And a well run and well communicated employee benefits program will deliver amazing returns on investment and be applicable to every single employee from the CEO down.

Nearly everyone does grocery shopping, everyone likes to take holidays, buys presents for birthdays and other celebrations, and if they do this through your discounts program then they can make some great savings every time they spend. We’ve talked a lot about why employee discounts programs make a lot of sense in our other blog posts.

Whilst a discounts program does cost some money to setup and maintain, especially those that offer a great service, that cost will be far exceeded by the total savings that your employees will be able to make through the scheme. (Check out some of those successes here.) Use some of of the annual pay budget to build an amazing scheme for all staff, which would be an amazing benefit for them to use at all times during the year, making savings every time they make a purchase.

HR teams have a number of tools that they can draw upon to adjust and improve their benefit offerings with only minimal impact on the bottom line, keeping the CFO happy, but importantly having a huge impact on the overall value that their employees feel from the benefits that you offer.  

My advice would be to do as many as you can, and let the employees pick what suits them best, as for every one you do you will make some employees just that little bit happier.

Robert Hicks

Robert is the Group HR Director at Reward Gateway. While running is his top way to unwind, he also loves going to gigs, watching football and cricket, and is known to enjoy the odd ski weekend.

Group HR Director

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