1.One of the key responsibilities of human resource management in any organization is to keep the employees happy and contended. Most employees are never always motivated by the paychecks but rather by the perks awarded alongside the paychecks. Acceptance and appreciation greatly boost the employee morale. This in return leads to reduced turnover rates as well as cutting down hiring costs. Thus, giving perks to employees will also help to create employee security.
For instance, an employee will not perform to perfection if he or she is continuously distracted by concerns of child care, medical responsibilities, and entertainment needs, among other domestic responsibilities. Any effort in line with providing solutions to these concerns will not only relieve the employees of their worries but make it look like they are well taken care of. This will help keep the employees committed to their duties and responsibilities. The end result will be reduced chances of employees seeking appointments elsewhere even if the current appointment could be earning less.
Giving employees perks as incentives alongside their salary will increase employee confidence and loyalty to the organization, boost the working morale and create a mutually interactive and friendly working environment for the employees. This will result in better performance of the organization towards its objective achievement.
2. Genentech and Zappos are two examples of companies using employee perks as motivating tools for their employees. Genentech Company has gone an extra mile in its concern for employee treatments.
Retirement and health care allowances are considered ordinary traditional benefits that are given by any sensible company to its employees. Genentech has done something extraordinary in order to stand out in terms of employee treatment by offering childcare during the day, free snacks, pet insurance, mothers nursing services and flexible scheduling among others. These are exceptional perks that are not offered by other companies. Thus, most employees of Genentech will resist the urge to seek employment elsewhere lest they forego these extraordinary perks.
On the other hand, Zappos has invested greatly in employee bonding, fostering a team building culture and interactive atmosphere amongst its employees. It offers more lucrative social welfare perks including; pajama parties, regular happy hours and nap rooms to its fun loving employees to ensure an always jovial and happy employee fraternity.
Therefore, it becomes virtually hard for an employee to ditch such perks for another company offering hefty paychecks but without such allowances. In a harsh economy that pauses huge and competitive expenses in hiring employees, the two companies have successfully won their employees’ trust and in the process retaining them, hence resulting in lower turnover rates as well as controlled wage bills.
3. The two cases of employee treatment depicted by Genentech and Zappos can be adopted by any other company that seeks to lower its turnover rates without necessarily offering hefty paychecks to its employees. An organization that has successfully retained its quality employees finds it easy to attain its organizational goals. The only way to do this as practiced by most companies, is by upwardly revising the employees’ paychecks.
Genentech and Zappos offer alternative approaches that will see companies retain their quality employees and still survive the harsh economies. The incentives offered by the two companies to their employees, are spread equally across the whole employee fraternity without discrimination. This is cheaper for the company in the long run as compared to scenarios where each individual employee would have their paycheck increased. Hence, such incentives can still be used by other companies to boost their employee morale.