Businesses offer more than the basic requirements to retain staff

Thursday, 1 November 2018

How well the economy is doing can have an impact on the benefits your employer offers.

The unemployment rate is still at its lowest since the global financial crisis (GFC), according to Stats NZ.

Victoria University's centre for labour, employment, and work director Stephen Blumenfeld said non-monetary perks were common before the GFC and have started to regain popularity in recent years as employers fight to retain staff.

'Losing good talent and going through the hiring process is expensive for a company. Employers are gradually becoming more generous with their perks.' Blumenfeld said.

Similarly Business NZ employment relations specialist Paul Mackay said how people felt about their work was a major factor in what kept them there.

**READ MORE:

* How do your staff perks stack up? Here are some on offer 

* Where do New Zealanders want to work?

* How many people receive benefits in New Zealand?**

Mackay said employers were becoming more flexible on how sick leave was used. 

The country's biggest bank, ANZ, offers unlimited sick leave to its staff.

ANZ senior talent and culture business manager Gina McJorrow said the unlimited sick leave tied into the bank's wider policies of flexibility.

'If you give people five days or if you give people 10 days, they can tend to see it as an entitlement,' McJorrow said.

'Because we've got that flexibility … when they're well, they're at work.'

ANZ formalised the unlimited leave policy across the bank after merged with National Bank, more than a decade ago.

McJorrow said staff responded 'extremely positively'.

'We've had examples where staff have actually needed extensive time off due to serious medical conditions.

'You see it first hand how incredibly grateful they are.'

What perks does your workplace offer? Tell us in the comments.

British Airbnb management service, Airsorted, entered the New Zealand market in January and immediately started a debate when it announced it would offer its staff time off for new pets, or 'pawternity leave'.

Airsorted's Auckland city manager Frances Mannion said she was surprised to see the work perk spark debate.

'I don't understand the negativity. It's not like we don't offer parental leave, instead we go above the basic requirement for that too. We offer three months paid parental leave and another three months paid leave discounted by 50 per cent,' Mannion said.

Employees can use one week paid leave to look after their new pet.

Mannion said this and its other work perks like extended paid parental leave and $500 Airbnb vouchers to customers were aimed to retain its staff.

Airsorted operates in 25 cities across the globe including Melbourne, Tel Aviv and Cape Town.

Telecommunications giant, Vodafone offers all its workers the option to either take a day off on their birthday or use it any other day.

Head of human resources Katie Williams said the 'your day' was an additional annual leave day for people to do whatever they value

'We changed our birthday day off to 'your day' as a result of our people saying they wanted this flexibility,' Williams said.

The Warehouse offers all its full time staff a combination of some of what the others above provide.

Staff get a day off on birthdays, extended sick leave as well as extended paternity leave.

It also offers a career break, which is essentially a job to return to if staff decide they want to take up to 12 months off work to travel, study or spend time with family. 

However, since the GFC, the staff benefit that has slowly been on its way out was severance packages after redundancies.

Blumenfeld said before the GFC it was common for a redundant workers to receive four week's pay in compensation if they had worked for a year,

Beyond that staff were entitled to an additional two week's pay. 

He said employers have now adopted caps on redundancy payouts to cut costs.