The Most Desired Employee Benefit of 2023

Do you still remember fruit Thursdays, bicycle parking spaces, or the "quiet room"? Ah, those were the times! We will reminisce about them like the Nokia 3310. Today: flexible working hours, private medical care, multisport, pizza Fridays, menstrual leave, and veterinary care for your pet. And now the curtain...none of this will mean anything if we simply don't like our job. And here's another Eureka! It's not just about the empty slogan in all this.

Don't you have the impression that companies are competing in the number and types of benefits? From the employee's point of view – great! But how is it that...they (the companies) still have a problem with attracting candidates? CVs are still not pouring in through the doors, windows, or chimneys. So:

• it must be the right match;
• only money motivates me;
• my current company will do everything to keep me;
• or maybe it's not just about the benefits and money, but something more?

 

What do I need medical care for if I don't have time to take two hours off because I'm swamped with work; why do I need slogans like flexible working hours, work-life fit/work-life balance, when my manager practices such micromanagement that I have to confess every minute and movement made in it?

So what's with these benefits? Necessary or not? Or should I ask: with what non-financial extras would you decide to work in an industry/company with which you disagree on various fronts? So is everything for sale, or not?

Not so long ago, the one "responsible for everything" spoke at a press conference about a four-day work system. Again, the internet had food for thought :) But did the "internet" calculate human efficiency or consider the ergonomics of the workplace?

Have you heard of the Gilbreths? Frank and Linian focused on the mechanization of work and the elimination of unnecessary movements. Their research – though conducted at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries and probably requiring significant adaptation to current realities – showed how you can "speed up" by 20%. Exactly, 20% - isn't that one of our workdays of the week? So maybe it is feasible without detriment to the Business, which raised the uproar: "who will pay for this"? Maybe a skillfully managed team is able to be so arranged to be just as effective with less working time?

But what does it mean to be skillfully managed? And here we have the crux: I identify with the statement "there is no employee in a slave", I identify with the lack of a stick and carrot approach, I identify with...loyalty. For me, as an HR person, the most wonderful benefit a company can give me, and what I can give its teams, is creating an organizational culture that is engaged, synergistic, working like connected vessels. How to achieve this? Often it is enough to start with the basics that we often forget in the rush for a more extraordinary benefit. And yes, it's great that they exist, but let's not lose sight of the foundations on which the entire organizational culture should be based:

• transparency of remuneration,
• clear career advancement and development path,
• a sense of agency and impact on the result,
• mutual respect and ...many other, seemingly very human behaviors, but...that's a topic for another blog post. Nevertheless, I can already tell you with all responsibility what the result will be - someone will simply like working for and with you – and…that's enough, seriously.