Q&A Video Series: Employee Benefits with Andy Firth from Ascensor

In today’s market, employees are looking for more than just salary alone and the minimum government stipulation when it comes to employee benefits. Having a range of benefits that aligns with your culture and values and that are seen as valuable by employees can differentiate you from your competitors.

For our monthly Q&A video interview this month, rather than approaching an Employee Benefits specialist, we thought it be a good idea to hear from an employer to get a true reflection on what role employee benefits play when it comes to recruiting and retaining employees.

Andy runs Ascensor who are a Digital Marketing Agency based in Leeds and have gone from strength to strength and grown significantly to 40 employees over recent years. Andy understands that they need to stand out from the crowd to help them attract the best people in a very competitive sector.

What role do you feel employee benefits play in attracting candidates?

The key employee benefit that you can have as a business is, is around investing in your culture and workspace and making sure people have got flexibility so that they can have a great work life balance, so that they can fit work around life and sort of vice versa.

We have things like flexible working, 25 days holiday plus birthday off. But we we want to make sure that we have better than competitive salaries. We’ve done employee surveys and a lot of people have said that they just want a bit more money

It’s also important that you provide the ability to buy and sell holidays as not everybody wants the same amount as holiday.

Health schemes are standard now so we do offer them but if you don't wear glasses or you don't go to the dentist a lot then it might not be of use. But the great thing about healthcare schemes is that employees can offset them against tax, so if people are spending money anyway, they are worth using.

How did you choose what benefits to include and which are the most valuable benefits that help you retain staff within the business?

We use software called Office Vibes and each week surveys they go out to the team. Responses are completely anonymous and we ask if there anything more that we can do, and if people can provide specific recommendations.

We also have a lot of team events, for example on the last Friday of the month we do a fuddle where everybody brings in some sort of food and we do games or we might have a BBQ so we're all outside together if the weather is nice.

We introduced an option to have stand up desks in the office, and we make sure that we’ve got the right equipment for people.

We believe that working with the right clients is important. Developers and designers want to work on businesses that you've heard of and they get a lot of satisfaction from that.

We want people to have an enjoyable experience at work and this is getting better because we ask for feedback and we take it on board.

When we turned 15, we set a goal of raising £15,000 for charities by doing events to raise money. We’re doing table tennis tournament, the Yorkshire three peaks and rowing Loch Ness. We try to make sure that everyone has a say in what we do and we try to create things that somebody's going to engage with and I think that's how you build a culture.

Are there any real cost effective but high value benefits that you feel any size employer should consider?

• Making sure that people can buy and sell holidays is a win-win or everyone
• A healthcare scheme is cost effective and a very positive thing to offer
• A great on boarding process means that you're more likely to retain new starters because you're ensuring that you're giving them a great experience from day one
• We are just about to introduce training around software that we use such as excel. We are going to insist that people do this as part of their onboarding and then add it into their development plan going forward. It’s a really cost-effective way to invest in individuals and they get a certificate when they have completed the training.

What would be your top three tips to an employer considering reviewing on implementing that new employee benefits?

1. It's really important to think about any benefit as having a financial value attached to it. Are the are the employees going to really see the benefit of that above the having that money in their pocket

2. When you’re planning your benefits try to do it with fairness in mind. Ask yourself who would benefit from this and who would not benefit. In my experience you can actually try to introduce something that you feel is really positive, but in certain cases it can have a negative or unexpected effect

3. Ask your employees what they want and listen and act on their feedback.

Which employee benefits should a company not compromise on, in your opinion?

Holidays - I think you should be looking at a minimum of 25 days, rewarding length of service, having an extra day on your birthday, and being able to buy and sell holidays.

Pension – legally you have to offer a pension as it’s so important.

Healthcare – offering savings on dentists, and opticians etc.

Salary – you need to advertise a salary or you’re not going to get the right people applying for the role

Onboarding – is massively important because during those first few weeks and months is when people will decide whether they have made the right decision or not.

If you would like further details on the type of employee benefits that would make a difference to your business, please get in touch and we will put you in touch with a specialist in this area.

keeley@key-appointments.co.uk / 07943 116559

If you are looking to get real return from your Digital Marketing then please get in touch with Andy Firth at Ascensor.