Work from Home Allowance for Better Employee Experience
With more and more employees now settling into a home-office routine, organizations are looking at new ways to engage and motivate their employees. Enabling employees to deliver their best in a remote environment with good work-life balance, frequent recognition, better connectivity, and digital tools for constant collaboration has emerged as a clear priority for business leaders.
According to a Barco survey, 77% of Indian respondents find work from home less enjoyable compared to the beginning of the pandemic, and 49% are missing the office social life. Struggling to collaborate with colleagues and clients, stifled creativity, distractions, and mental stress are some of the challenges that employees nowadays face. Let us see some benefits/ allowances that organizations can offer to employees to overcome these everyday WFH challenges:
Wellness Allowance
There has been a fundamental change in what holistic wellness and wellbeing mean. Organizations must look to improve Employees’ Quality of Life through Digital Wellness benefits or allowances since they are likely to be accessed more in the virtual set-up. From one-on-one counseling helplines to meditation and yoga programs or providing wellness allowance to employees such as subscriptions to fitness packages, or buying workout-related equipment like dumbbells, spinning bikes, etc., organizations should move beyond the conventional health programs. Organizations can also take help from data and insights from multiple sources such as pulse surveys, formal and informal communications, focus-group conversations, and much more to build relevant, personalized plans for employee wellbeing.
Learning and Development Allowance
Employees often prefer to work in a job that contributes to their professional and personal development. Hence, organizations that encourage learning are likely to keep employees engaged and motivated. With the new work from home policies, employees are very likely to save a lot of time that was usually spent commuting to and from work. They can utilize this time to learn new skills and enhance their knowledge. Thus, it is a good time for employers to invest in e-learning platforms and provide their employees with the opportunity to learn new skills as well as to upskill.
Gadgets and Equipment Allowance
There are two things that are essential for employees to perform — their skills and tools available at their disposal. The facilities available in offices have a direct impact on the quality of work produced by the employees. But now that the workspaces are virtual and more people are work from home allowance, many employees may lack the necessary resources required to finish their tasks. In such a situation, employers can offer allowances or compensation to help employees incur the costs of getting access to tools.
Meal Allowances
Work from home also means work at home. For many employees, working from home means additional domestic responsibilities along with their office work. They are now also required to cook their own meals at home, which they could have earlier gotten at the office cafeteria. This either impacts employees’ productivity or nudges them towards skipping meals amidst hectic work schedules. Employers can offer meal allowances or digital meal cards to help employees cover the additional costs of ordering in food whenever they need it. This could especially benefit employees who live alone and must manage the household by themselves.
Building a strong culture, investing in digital tools and technology, offering Flexi office space, and ensuring everyone across the organization resonates with this new paradigm will be crucial for organizations. Those who are able to provide the best employee-centric remote working environment will emerge stronger.
