How to attract the best talent with employee benefits

They say your people are your biggest asset. And that’s probably true, unless you have a first edition gold foil Shining Charizard under your mattress. 

You might have a great bunch of people working for you already. But if you want your business to be sustainable, you need to be thinking about growing the team, succession plans and the next generation of new starters. 

So how do you attract the best people? Especially when there’s so much competition? One place you can start is your employee benefits offering. Streamline it, mix in some new additions like an EV salary sacrifice scheme, and you’ll stand out from other employers. 

Look at any part of your business and you’ll appreciate the importance of the people who do the work. For example, if you want your business to have the best product, you need a team with the creativity and skills to build it. Top performers are more productive, too. McKinsey research found that top performers in a critical role were eight times more productive than average performers in the same role. 

Unfortunately, you can’t hit Ctrl+C on your best employee and Ctrl+V them into an empty seat. Hiring just one new person can be time-consuming and expensive, and that’s before you get into planning an entire pipeline of early-career talent. So, ideally, you’ll want to build your reputation so that candidates come looking for you – not just the other way around. 

100%. In the past, businesses could leap ahead of their competitors with technological innovations. These days, technology is relatively easy to replicate, and AI will level the playing field even further. 

When everyone has roughly equivalent tech, it becomes about who uses it, how and when. Today’s workplace calls for an evolved set of skills – including creativity, discernment and adaptability – which are relatively rare and hard-earned. If you feel your business is yet to embrace technology or work alongside AI, imagine the impact that some fresh outside thinking could bring. 

It’s rarely just about the paycheck. Candidates are thinking more broadly about how and where they want to work and what really matters to them.

In research by benefits provider Zest, 62% of respondents said a company’s benefits package is the most important thing they look for in an employer. 63% of respondents said they’d quit their job if a different company offered them a better benefits package. And that figure jumps to 70% for Millennials and 71% for Gen Z.

With that in mind, we’re sharing three tips to make your benefits top. 

The best benefits give extra value beyond what’s possible from a pay rise. They help people streamline and simplify their routine, which can improve their wellbeing. And they show people how much you appreciate them. We think these benefits tick all those boxes. 

EV salary sacrifice scheme

Set up a salary sacrifice scheme and you and your employees could save up to 40% off the cost of a new electric car. Payments are taken from your employees’ pre-tax salary each month, meaning they pay less Income Tax and National Insurance overall. The Benefit in Kind (BiK) tax on EVs is very low compared to petrol and diesel cars, and one convenient monthly payment covers the car, insurance, servicing and maintenance, and breakdown cover.

Electric vehicles are cheaper to run, too. You could charge your EV at home for as little as £160 a year, compared with £1,280 for petrol. The combined financial benefits mean a salary sacrifice scheme is a seriously impactful addition to your employee benefits programme. 

Flexible working

For many people, this is a dealbreaker. Where possible, flexible working arrangements help people care for children and relatives, manage their personal schedule, and work in the environments that are best for them. This can have a significant effect on wellbeing and job satisfaction. 

In a CIPD study, 19% of organisations said they planned to increase the provision and uptake of wider forms of flexible working – with the top reason being it improves an organisation’s ability to attract and retain staff (64%).

Food and drink 

It’s hard to get excited about coming into the office when the coffee tastes more like Bovril. When there’s high-quality food and drink around, it feels like a little bonus every day. Start with some drinks upgrades: get a subscription for some speciality drip coffee, or push the boat out and install an espresso machine. Make sure the basic nibbles are covered – with some healthy choices to help people snack through the afternoon slump. And think about covering some lunches by ordering in from a local business or even hiring a food truck to pull up. You’ll give your team’s wallets and tastebuds a break from the £8 high street tuna baguettes, and it’s a chance for people to get together and socialise. 

People’s personal and family circumstances can look very different. If you only have one fixed, inflexible benefits package, it’s bound to put some people off or not tick the boxes they’re looking for. So we don’t recommend the one-size-fits-all approach. 

An EV salary sacrifice scheme is a great way to bring some flexibility to your benefits programme. If your employee doesn’t drive, there’s no obligation to get involved. But if they’re interested in saving up to 40% on a new electric car, they can browse the range and choose the model and term length that suits them. They can even choose between £400 towards a home charger installation or £400 of public charging credit.

Flexibility helps employees get the most of their staff benefits by mixing and matching the perks that work best for them. And it’s becoming more common. WTW research shows that at the moment, only two out of five businesses give their employees some choice in their benefits – but this figure could grow to 76% over the next three years. 

Your employees care about sustainability. In a study by PwC, nearly 70% of people said that a company’s overall environmental policies and practices are important when they’re choosing an employer. When your benefits programme helps people make greener choices – for example, by switching to an electric vehicle – it makes them feel good about the positive impact they’re having on the world. 

A green benefits programme can also help people engage with the company’s sustainability journey. Businesses are catching onto this idea, and WTW research suggests that company benefits will become more values-driven. Right now, just 30% of employers are using benefits to signal purpose and values to their employees and other stakeholders, but this number is expected to grow to 41% over the next three years. 

If you’ve decided it’s time to freshen up your employee benefits to attract some new talent, the next step is to shortlist the partners who will deliver the benefits. We recommend you choose organisations with a good track record and reputation – because a poor experience for your employees can be a poor reflection of your company. 

When it comes to setting up your EV salary sacrifice scheme, you could join the 9,000+ employers that choose Octopus Electric Vehicles. There are plenty of reasons people love us, but we’ll recap a few here. 

1. We design our scheme to be financially secure: it’s free to set up, with early termination protection and no brokers or middlemen. 
2. It’s low-faff: with a dedicated account manager and minimal extra work for your HR and payroll teams. 
3. You join the Octopus Group ecosystem: you can add in workplace chargers and smart energy solutions, and access public charging through Octopus Electroverse. 

With so many businesses competing for the same pool of people, you need to grab candidates’ attention, and employee benefits offer you an impactful way to do that. 

Only 35% of organisations believe they offer a good level of employee benefits and a generous pension scheme. And only 39% say they’re designing their benefit programmes to be employee-focused. Now is the time to take action, get ahead of the curve, and craft a benefits offering that’s more attractive and competitive.

We can’t help you upgrade the staff snacks from a 2kg broken biscuit assortment to an organic smoothie bar.

But we can set you up with a talent-poachingly-good EV salary sacrifice scheme.