The conversation around employee perks and benefits is usually centered around the competition between big tech companies that can afford internal office slides, free meals and weekly dolphin rides – or whatever the latest fad in employee engagement is.
Recently, however, more studies are showing how less is usually more when it comes to employee benefits and employees are increasingly yearning for the simple things in life as office perks. Natural light and good views are seemingly trumping ‘Prosecco Fridays’ whilst chairs with strong back support are far more appealing than Charlie the office dog.
This makes sense because let’s be honest – no one wants to work in the basement – no matter how brightly painted the walls are. Another simple and often undervalued office perk is access to intuitive technology that makes the working lives of your professionals easier and more efficient.
A recruiter’s time is precious, and it’s very rare for their day to finish at 5pm. Candidates can often only take calls late at night and hiring managers seem to always push that feedback call to 8pm. No matter how many times they try to arrange meetings within working hours, professionals in this sector always find their evenings filling up remarkably fast.
In the flexible working world, it’s unreasonable to assume your consultants are going to stay chained to their desks until 9pm every night. With that in mind, if they had access to the right technology they would have the ability to continue their work from home – or anywhere outside the office. Stuart Thomas, Recruitment Industry Expert at Access Group discusses how different aspects of technology can positively impact your employees and business:
Mobile technology
The freedom to log on and work remotely will suddenly open up a lot of possibilities for your consultants, as well as free time in their diaries. Gone are the days of lugging heavy laptops from office to home while spending ten minutes trying to log on to the server remotely – provide your recruiters with easy and remote access to recruitment software and candidate information.
Collaborative platforms
Organisations are becoming increasingly more collaborative and teams spend more and more time delivering projects collectively, which means an internal communications system is a must. Having a beneficial infrastructure in place to support collaborative work is a benefit for the entire group. Internal communication platforms give employees the ability to see updates, track timelines, share information and easily connect from apps or from computer desktops.
Online HR management
Providing your employees with access to the essential information they need, as well as the ability to request and amend records, is a valuable perk that makes a huge difference to productivity. Whether it’s recording absences, tracking holidays or requesting annual leave, online systems that easily allow employees to do this are a credit to efficiency amongst your team.
The technology integrated within agencies and recruitment businesses has a direct impact on employees and their ability to efficiently deliver results and drive high performance. Providing your people with the right tools and technology and ensuring they have access to adequate systems and software might just be the perk your employees are actually looking for. After all, beanbags and ping pong tables are great for the first month, but seamless systems that make your life better and your job easier don’t get old.
Stuart is a Customer Success Lead in the Recruitment division of The Access Group. He joined Access in 2001 as a Sales Coordinator and has held various roles through Marketing, Account Management, Project and Programme Management, Product Management and Client Services.