12 Employee Benefits Trends: Understand the Perks of the Future

Trends in employee benefits have changed radically over the past few years as companies better understand the importance of supporting their workforce beyond a paycheck. To stay competitive and attract top talent, companies need to understand the evolving landscape of employee benefits administration.

Companies are now offering more comprehensive packages that address various aspects of employee well-being, from mental health support and flexible work arrangements to professional development opportunities and family-friendly policies. Staying attuned to these changes and adapting to them can make a significant difference in attracting and retaining top talent in today’s competitive job market.

This guide explores the factors shaping employee benefits trends, the latest perks, and examples of forward-thinking companies offering them.

Factors shaping emerging trends in employee benefits

The changing employee benefits landscape is undeniably linked to current global events and the COVID-19-prompted shift to flexible working. Here are eight factors shaping the new trends in employee benefits.

1. Aging workforce

People live longer and stay in the workforce past the typical retirement age. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, employment of workers aged 65 or older has grown by 117% over the past 20 years. Similarly, employment of individuals aged 75 or older has also seen a 117% increase.

While mature workers bring experience, expertise, and knowledge to their roles, they also require considerate benefits that support their health and productivity.

Employers must also support the “squeezed middle” category of workers who struggle to offer childcare for children and grandchildren while facing eldercare responsibilities.

2. Mental health awareness

The World Health Organization formally recognized burnout as an “occupational phenomenon” in 2019. Years later, employees’ mental health is still declining. 40% of employees say the constant pressure to be always available for work is inducing their mental health decline. More workers all over the world have also been diagnosed with prevalent conditions such as anxiety, depression, or sleep issues due to work.

Employers largely understand the mental strain employees are under, which is caused by health concerns, social changes, the switch to remote working, constant layoffs, etc.

As a result, the corporate wellness industry is growing, and 45% of companies expect more investment in wellness programs in the future.

3. Diversity and inclusion

Companies are committing to better DEI initiatives. However, adding these values to a code of conduct or organizational mission statement is no longer enough.

Compared to expectations, a lack of trust and ineffective leadership drive diversity out the door. Among employees who did not trust their senior leaders, 64% felt they had to leave to advance their careers. The same study reveals that over the past two years, there has been an 18% decrease in the number of leaders who endorse their company’s overall DEI efforts.

Organizations must establish DEI (diversity, equality, and inclusion) as crucial elements of their corporate cultures.

You may run DEI microlearning training or offer benefits like floating holidays to accommodate religious and cultural holidays outside the Christian calendar. Alternatively, you can create gender-neutral restrooms to serve transgender employees better.

4. Shift to remote and hybrid work model

Flexible working initially emerged as a temporary response to the COVID-19 pandemic. However, the following years proved this is a lasting change—albeit not for all organizations.

Workers worldwide have widely embraced working from home or adopting a hybrid approach. However, this mode of work has multiple downsides.

Working remotely can be isolating for people who live alone or who thrive on face-to-face connections in an office environment. Buffer’s annual remote work report reveals that 21% of remote employees struggle with staying home a lot, 15% face loneliness, and 11% have difficulties staying motivated.

Employers who have adapted their working model must update their employee benefits to ensure they’re still relevant for remote or hybrid workers.

For example, complementary lunches or on-site corporate gym memberships may not be accessible to employees who no longer attend a physical workplace.

Carolyn Stern, CEO of EI Experience and author of “The Emotionally Strong Leader,” suggests supporting remote teams and developing deep, meaningful relationships with employees. As a result, they will be committed to doing their best work.

Carolyn promises that her inside-out approach will last much longer than Free Food Fridays:

5. Prioritizing work-life balance

Work-life balance should extend beyond being a buzz phrase. It must be a core part of your culture if you want your employees to thrive at your company.

According to recent Randstad data, 45% of employees wouldn’t accept a job if it didn’t provide flexibility around working hours, and 40% are looking for location flexibility.

Work-life balance means different things to individual employees, as everyone has a unique lifestyle, hobbies, and family or caring responsibilities outside of their employment.

6. Technology will never stop evolving

Technology is also championing a new culture of employee benefits, where employees are encouraged to be their own benefit managers and have more control over their well-being. These 24/7 self-service apps provide HR leaders with precise data on how employees use benefits resources. Meanwhile, employees can access crucial benefits info at the tap of a button and from the palm of their hand.

This ease of access makes reviewing pension contributions, adding dependents to a health plan, taking a telehealth assessment, or enrolling in an L&D program effortless.

We now know the motivating factors prompting employers to change their approach to employee benefits. But what should you offer to swing the pendulum toward happy, healthy, highly engaged employees who want to stay with the company?

Here are some trending employee benefits in the market that will make a difference at your company.

Ensuring flexible working for everyone

Employees want and expect flexible working arrangements in a post-COVID-19 landscape.

With so many ways to approach flexible working, a popular approach for a benefits strategy is implementing one or more of the following flexibility benefits:

• Following a hybrid 3:2 model (with three days in the office and two at home)
• Frontloaded workweeks to maximize energy levels (working 12 hours on Monday, ten on Tuesday, eight on Wednesday, six on Thursday, and four on Friday to bank 40 hours for the week)
• Working a compressed 9/80 schedule (80 hours over nine working days and the tenth day off)
• Working remotely and from any country

Providing more inclusive employee benefits that can delight workers

Remote-first and exclusively office-based companies have a more straightforward task of designing an employee benefits scheme that is inclusive for the entire workforce.

However, it’s far more complex for hybrid companies, where some employees work from home while others work in a physical work environment.

The main objective here is to ensure that employees receive the same level of benefits regardless of their location:

• Example 1: If office-based employees receive free snacks and lunches, offer remote workers free home delivery subscriptions or vouchers for an online store
• Example 2: If employees attend an on-site yoga class or receive massages at work, remote employees should receive online access to virtual courses or vouchers for local wellness centers
• Example 3: Employers could offer childcare support for their remote teams if an on-site crèche is available in the office

Being mindful of mental health in the workspace

Employers favor mental health benefits that rethink the role of work in our lives. Therefore, organizations must proactively address employees’ mental and emotional health and offer resilience training alongside well-being booster initiatives.

Widespread mental health benefits to consider include:

• Duvet days (no-strings-attached time off without notice)
• Mindfulness apps
• Life coaching
• Counseling
• Bereavement leave
• Mental health training (including for leaders)
• Mental health calculators
• Addiction support
• Yoga classes

Supporting work-life balance

Employers have acknowledged their employees have lives outside of work with the launch of some of the best employee benefits.

For families

Hilton Hotels supports working parents with:

• Generous parental leave (for biological and adoptive parents)
• Subsidized childcare
• A partnership with Milk Stork enabling breastfeeding mothers to ship or store milk when traveling for work

For pet owners

“Pawternity” leave is also on the rise for workers with fur babies. Employees of the customer data platform mParticle enjoy up to two weeks of paid leave and free pet insurance when they adopt an animal from a shelter.

The pub chain and brewery BrewDog provides a week’s paid leave for owners of new puppies or adopted animals.

For more personal time

A holistic employee leave strategy (for parents, pet parents, and non-parents alike!) can also incorporate a shorter working week.

For example, Kellogg’s allows employees to finish at noon on Fridays from May to September.

Many countries and companies worldwide explore the benefits of four-day workweeks.

Being generous with vacation time

If you need a nudge to prioritize relaxation, a 40-year study finds that people who take less than three weeks of annual vacation have a 37% greater chance of dying.

However, vacations can be expensive, which is why Airbnb, for example, offers their people a hefty allowance. As part of its travel stipend policy, the employer provides $2,000 to employees, allowing them to stay at any Airbnb property worldwide. Another common problem is that employees find it hard to switch off from work, knowing their workload will be even more stressful when they return to their desks.

Company-wide shutdowns can be the solution here. Employers like Hootsuite, the Muse, PwC, and many others force disconnection from work by ensuring that all employees take leave simultaneously. This removes the temptation to check emails, log in remotely, or skip their vacation entirely—nothing is happening back in the office.

Incorporating family planning and fertility benefits into your list of employee perks

Three out of four people state their company hasn’t built an open environment to discuss fertility. The same report observes that 47% of companies have no supportive fertility-related policies.

Employees are not happy about this fact. A Carrot Fertility survey found that 42% of employees say that a new job offer with no fertility benefits is a deal breaker.

Hence, there’s a clear case for employers to provide benefits that allow workers to pursue parenthood, regardless of their medical circumstances, relationship status, or background.

Here are some of the typical features offered in a high-quality family planning and fertility benefits package:

• Assisted reproductive technology, including IVF, IUI, and ICSI cycles
• Low testosterone support
• Donor-assisted reproduction
• Adoption services
• Miscarriage leave
• Accessibility for LGBTQ+ and single employees

Thinking of menopause support

Carrot’s Menopause in the Workplace survey reveals that 80% of employees see menopause as a workplace challenge. They also state that menopause has interfered with their work through fundamental changes such as a loss of concentration, lower confidence, and more breaks needed.

These results send a clear message—employers must do more to support their female workforce during this natural phase of life.

Some employers like retailer ASOS lead the way by offering menopause leave as an employee benefit that aims to break the stigma of menopause.

Similarly, the UK’s National Health Service is the country’s largest employer of women, and the average female NHS worker is 43 years old. With up to 260,000 nurses, doctors, and healthcare workers approaching menopause, the NHS chief executive Amanda Pritchard has recently announced new guidance to support them.

This support includes:

• Flexible working patterns
• Lighter, cooler uniforms
• Provision of fans
• Lighter duties as required

Rethinking social benefits

Workplace connections matter. Employers are responsible for building them in a global and diverse workforce.

There are various methods of forging connections in a global workforce. For example, Microsoft and Amazon have employee resource groups for people from different backgrounds to help build networks and support career development.

Other ways to create a sense of community and increase camaraderie include:

• Virtual walk-and-talk meetings
• Virtual team-building classes (for example, Google’s WFH cooking classes)
• Social impact initiatives like volunteering
• Off-site events that bring teams, departments, or the entire organization together

Preparing crisis employee benefits

The best employee benefits schemes continuously evolve by responding to current events and providing employees with the support they need at the moment. Some employers have taken bold action to protect women’s abortion rights in response to the US Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade overturns.

One example is the outdoor clothing employer Patagonia. They quickly reacted to the news by offering to fund abortion costs. They also cover bail expenses for any employee arrested during protests against this shocking injustice.

Similarly, when wildfires hit the US West Coast, employer HP Inc. quickly shipped air filters to impacted employees to support their respiratory health.

These examples showcase the need for companies to be reactive and purposeful instead of generic and impractical in their approach to workplace benefits in the face of a crisis.

Encouraging financial wellness

Tying in with the above, almost half of employers are expected to offer financial wellness benefits by 2026. This is because 80% of chief human resource officers are concerned that wage increases are not keeping pace with inflation. This concern is echoed by 59% of employees who feel their pay is inadequate for the current economic climate.

Redesigning employee development

LinkedIn’s Workplace Learning report observes how a strong learning culture impacts business outcomes, with a 57% increase in retention and a 23% increase in internal mobility.

However, employers are moving away from offering unlimited courses and books for employees who don’t have the time or inclination to take advantage of these benefit plans. Employers in the know are opting instead for a more holistic approach to upskilling and reskilling employees by adopting initiatives like:

• Microlearning to promote learning in the flow of work
• Competency-based feedback cycles
• Encouraging workers to take ownership of their career development journey

Offering customized benefits packages

The shift towards personalized benefits that cater to individual employee needs and preferences is seen through increased interest in hyper-personalization or fringe and voluntary benefits. Generational differences, as well as constant market and lifestyle changes, can explain this state of affairs.

A Forbes Survey discovered that flexible work options are considered important to job satisfaction by 83% of Gen Z and 84% of Millennials. In contrast, only 73% of Gen X and 76% of Baby Boomers share this sentiment.

Enable your workforce with Deel

From flexible work arrangements to financial wellness programs, your organization can improve employee satisfaction by revamping the perks accompanying employee paychecks. The best approach to finding out what your workers want or need is to ask them and follow some of the emerging trends in employee benefits mentioned above.

Deel’s talent management solution is your go-to solution for supporting HR leaders in everything from gathering employee feedback to delivering resilience employee training, competency-based learning, and more.

Additionally, Deel HR, our truly global HRIS solution, is always included for free. With local compliance built into our software—from mandatory PTO and minimum wage to benefits and termination requirements—Deel will keep you compliant in 150 countries, effortlessly.

Engage, develop, and retain your employees even in the face of global challenges and disruptions with Deel.