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Employee engagement, not benefits or luxury perks, is crucial to staff retention 

A recent article stated that it is employee engagement, not benefits or luxury perks that are crucial to staff retention. The original article written by Diana Bradley was originally published here.

Stakes in the talent race are heating up, leading a number of companies to adopt fanciful perks as a recruiting tool. The trend is so notable that a recent feature film – The Internship -showcased Google’s novel perks, including free automobiles for the carless, on-site laundry and dry cleaning, free meals, massage chairs, and sleep pods.

But if employees are unhappy with management, perks don’t work past a certain point – no matter how appealing – according to Gallup’s 2013 State of the American Workplace report, released last June. Findings show that 70% of Americans either hate their job or are “disengaged” from their work and that engagement has the greatest effect on staffers’ well-being.

In fact, should an organisation decide against showering employees with lavish perks altogether, it would not necessarily harm its corporate reputation, according to W2O Group principal Gary Grates. It all comes down to the individual organization.

One Fortune 500 company that does not subscribe to crazy perks is Texas Instruments, said Steve Lyle, director of engineering workforce development and university marketing, in an interview with Business Insider.
Although the semiconductor manufacturer does offer competitive financial and health benefits, the company’s main focus is its culture, added Lyle.

“You don’t have to offer perks for the sake of it,” says Grates. “If the perks enhance the experiences of employees and they are complementary or supplementary to what the corporate environment is, then that is when they really matter.”

The article states “If you go to a workplace every day that offers free lunch and massages, but don’t enjoy what you do, those perks do not really matter”.

The article goes on to talk about when perks backfire and further emphasises the importance of employee engagement.

The content of this post is not owned by Engage for Success and the original article can be found here.

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