14 Best Employee Perks to Attract and Retain Top Talent in 2025

The digital revolution and rapid evolution of work practices have introduced too many changes into the world of business in too little time. This has created a lack of skilled workers, leading to a talent shortage that makes it difficult for businesses to hire and retain top talent.  A BRP report highlights that 9 out of 10 leaders say their organisations face a skill gap.

The modern workplace requires innovative solutions to attract and retain skilled candidates. Employee perks can be an excellent solution for this talent gap, as employees and potential candidates value them as much as their take-home salaries.

Read this blog to explore 15 inventive employee perks that can help you create a reliable, stable workforce.

What Are Employee Perks?

Employee perks are wage-exclusive compensations that a company provides to its employees to improve their work experience. Some common perks include health and wellness incentives (such as discount coupons for health supplements), game rooms, in-house cafes, etc.

The major difference between employee benefits and perks is that perks aren’t mandatory provisions. Your company can offer “casual Fridays” as a perk, depending on how you want the employee experience to be in the workplace.

Perks are a level-up from employee benefits. They help your company compete to attract more talented candidates and retain your employees.

Also read: Top 10 Employee Engagement Activities

Why Employee Perks Matter

Productivity comes easily to emotionally and physically healthy employees. Employee perks work to enhance job satisfaction for employees, in turn reducing absenteeism and turnover.

Perks remove the well-being barriers that employees commonly encounter (such as rising healthcare costs or accessibility to certain services) and empower them to enhance their work-life balance or improve their living standards.

Employees see perks as your company’s gesture of looking after them, and this goes a long way in establishing loyalty and reducing employee turnover. Perks develop a healthy, inclusive company culture and may even help you boost employee engagement in the workplace.

Fun Fact: According to an engagement survey by Gallup, there was a difference of 23% in profitability between high-engagement and low-engagement organisations. Perks may help you add the extra mile to employee experience to enhance their engagement levels!

Categories of Employee Perks

Perks at work are generally classified into five distinct categories. Your organisation can select a balanced combination of office perks from each category to deliver a holistic experience to your employees:

1. Health and Wellness Perks

Health and wellness perks focus on your employees’ physical, mental, and emotional well-being.

Some great examples of health and wellness perks are:

• Mental health support through a partnership with certified counsellors.

• Wellness programs like yoga, meditation, etc.

• Preventive healthcare (for example, seminars on prevention of common conditions like diabetes).

• Onsite health facilities, like first-aid kits, in-house infirmary, emergency services, etc.

2. Work-Life Balance Perks

Work-life balance perks help employees feel more satisfied with their work and personal life by helping them etch out more personal time from their work schedule.

Some of the most popular work-life balance perks look like the following:

• Flexible work arrangements allow employees to work from home, remotely, or anywhere a few times a week.

• Paid Time Off (PTO) allows employees to take some personal time off without losing pay.

• Parental leave perks empower employees who are new parents to take paid time off to care for their newborns.

• Family support perks provide specialised services to employees’ families if they require them, such as financial subsidies, school and parental care, and unpaid support.

• Pet-friendly policies facilitate pet insurance, pet days, pet daycare, etc.

3. Financial Perks

Financial office perks are targeted towards top talent to attract and retain them.

Some examples are:

• Competitive salaries enable you to poach talent and bring them on board.

• Bonuses and incentives as a way to recognise employee achievements.

• Equity and stock options to help employees feel ownership of the brand.

• Retirement benefits as a way to encourage long-term association.

• Financial wellness programs for financial literacy and improved money decisions.

4. Career Growth and Development Perks

Career growth and development perks aid employees with tools for self-growth and skill development. It helps them achieve personal growth goals.

Some examples are:

• Training and development to help employees do their work better.

• Mentorship programs targeted at polishing employee skills through personal guidance.

• Tuition reimbursement to encourage learning and upskilling.

• Career advancement opportunities to keep employees motivated and engaged.

5. Miscellaneous Perks

These perks don’t fall into any specific category but are extremely popular because of their contemporary nature:

• Employee recognition programs to acknowledge and reward good work by employees.

• Travel and relocation assistance to make things easier for employees when they move to new office locations.

• Sustainability perks give points or bonuses for environmentally responsible behavior.

• Social engagement activities to help employees improve relationships and enhance communication.

• Technology perks where the company funds employees’ work setups in remote locations.

• Onsite amenities such as in-house cafes, weekly special menus, etc.

Also read: Top 10 Monetary and Non-Monetary Benefits to Offer Employees

Top 14 Employee Perks to Offer in 2025

Gallup research shows that engagement and well-being are reciprocal and incremental. By providing perks to your employees, you contribute to their well-being, bringing back high productivity and engagement for your company.

Below are the top 14 office perks of 2025 you can consider for your workplace:

1. Comprehensive Health Insurance Plans

Health insurance, combined with wellness benefits such as mental health support, dental care, fitness, etc., helps employees lead a healthy lifestyle and maintain well-being. These perks are so popular that insurers report an increase of more than 25% in employee benefit claims since 2023.

It is important to partner with the right group health and wellness benefits provider to design comprehensive health insurance plans for your employees. Onsurity helps you provide monthly healthcare and wellness membership plans to your workforce.

Onsurity facilitates easy claims with the help of an in-house good doctors team. The platform also provides – health checkups, group health insurance, group term life insurance, and much more as part of their holistic healthcare memberships.

2. Flexible Work Arrangements

Flexible work arrangements such as hybrid work or remote work allow employees better autonomy over their work lives. They can better align their professional commitments with personal obligations, enhancing their work-life balance and reducing stress. Flexible work allows employees to plan and time their deliverables without having to worry about punching in or out, improving their productivity.

A report by LinkedIn Talent Solutions highlights that employees who are satisfied with their employers’ flexible work arrangements are more than twice as likely to recommend the company to other candidates.

3. Paid Parental Leave

Double-income households are on the rise today, which makes work management a big challenge for new parents. In such situations, you can offer perks such as paid parental leave to your employees and empower them to stay home for some time and get used to the change in lifestyle. Getting extended time off also enables them to focus on caring for the baby without stressing about work.

Paid parental leaves help humanise your company and show consideration for your employees’ difficulties.

Also read: Maternity and Paternity Leave in India

4. Professional Development Opportunities

Companies need to consider employees as individuals with personal aspirations. Perks such as personal development opportunities help employees achieve their personal growth goals and enhance their portfolios.

You can offer personal development opportunities through training, webinars, seminars, workshops, tuition assistance, virtual learning sessions, or bite-sized modules. Partner with subject matter experts to create high-quality L&D content for this purpose.

Trivia: According to SHRM, 48% of companies provide tuition assistance perk.

5. Mental Health Support

Mental health support perks focus mainly on helping employees cope with stress, build relationships, and be productive and physically healthy.

Poor mental health increases stress levels and absenteeism in employees, negatively impacting productivity at work, according to a paper published in National Library of Medicine. According to WHO, productivity loss costs $1 trillion annually. This makes a strong case for enhancing mental health support and workplace well-being.

You can provide mental health perks by hiring in-house counsellors, partnering with a mental health clinic, providing training and exercises around identifying mental health issues, etc.

It is easier to partner with new-age providers like Onsurity to integrate mental health as a perk in health and wellness benefit plans. These providers club insurance, fitness, and wellness benefits to create comprehensive care packages that employees can avail of at great prices.

6. Equity and Stock Options

This perk allows employees to purchase company stock at a fixed price at any time. This perk allows employees to have ownership in the company, which works as an incentive to perform better so that the company also progresses.

While equity represents ownership in the company, stock options represent contracts that allow employees to buy company shares.

7. Employee Recognition Programs

Perks like shout-outs, bonuses, and performance incentives focus on acknowledging and rewarding exceptional performance, positive impact, and other desirable actions your employees display at work. Employee recognition can be gift vouchers, discount coupons, shoutouts, mentions, bonuses, or other incentives.

Recognising your employees for their achievements helps reduce the attrition rate and makes employees feel more satisfied. It also helps them build their reputation and seek healthy internal competition.

8. Retirement Benefits

Retirement perks may or may not be financially influenced. These perks provide your employees with a long-term solution that establishes a support system for their retirement. Retirement perks can include leave encashment, gratuity, provident funds, pension, or other incentives.

These perks are designed to make the employees’ retired lives more comfortable and protect them from the impact of inflation.

9. Unlimited PTO or Generous Leave Policies

Unlimited paid time off (PTO) is a generous leave policy or perk that allows employees to take as much time off as they want as long as they fulfil their work responsibilities.

This highly competitive perk attracts talent and helps your company retain more employees. Forbes reports that unlimited PTO as a perk rose 178% in job listings between 2015 and 2019.

Such perks let employees steer their time and schedule by prioritising productivity and work instead of attendance.

10. Onsite Childcare or Childcare Allowance

Today, many dual-income families with children require childcare or daycare and must, therefore, shoulder those expenses. Given that childcare is costly, your company can have an onsite childcare centre or reimburse childcare expenses (up to a certain amount) as perks.

This will help parents stay stress-free in the office, knowing their children and childcare expenses are handled.

11. Diversity and Inclusion Initiatives

Employers have a social and ethical responsibility to create a safe work environment for people from different walks of life. By incorporating DE&I initiatives into the workplace, employers can help all employees feel welcome and seen regardless of their gender identity, sexual orientation, race, or ethnicity.

These initiatives are also known to improve morale and productivity. According to a survey from CNBC, almost 80% of workers say that they want to work for a company that values workplace diversity, equity, and inclusion.

Initiatives like ERG (Employee Resource Groups) empower the LGBTQ+ members of your workforce to gain easy access to support, community, and help.

Even a small gesture, such as adding LGBTQ+ partners as dependents of the employees in the group health insurance policy, can create a lasting and meaningful impact.

12. Sustainability Perks

Sustainability employee perks refer to gifts or incentives companies give employees to recognise and reward environmentally conscious behaviours. For example, if an employee consistently rides a bicycle to work, you can reward them with discount coupons, movie tickets, or reward points and motivate others to follow in their footsteps.

It helps make a difference in the environment and promotes sustainable behaviours.

13. Financial Wellness Programs

Financial wellness refers to understanding money and making responsible and educated financial decisions. You can provide financial wellness perks by regularly holding seminars or workshops on financial literacy. Partner with expert advisers and speakers to guide your employees on managing their money and achieving their financial goals.

These perks empower your employees to take control of their finances and gain more confidence.

14. Pet-Friendly Policies

Perks should also extend to employees’ pets since they are also part of the family. Employees should be able to access support from their workplace to take better care of them.

Pet perks include pet insurance policies, discounted pet supplies, pet days at work, pet-friendly offices, partnerships with vet clinics, etc. These perks drastically simplify employees’ difficulties when their pets fall sick or need extra care and attention.

Suggested read: Top 11 Health and Wellness Gifts for Your Employees​

How to Implement Employee Perks Successfully

Employee perks should align with your company’s policies and the needs of your employees. Below are a few handy considerations to help you implement employee perks in the workplace successfully:

1. Assess Your Organisational Needs

Understand your company culture to find the perks that will fit best. You can survey your employees to understand your workforce and analyse employee demographics to determine relevant perks. You can also look at industry benchmarks to get an idea.

2. Consider the Cost

Once you have the data to select the right perks, you must set a budget aside. For example, what would your budget be for group health insurance or for setting up an in-house game room?

3. Communicate with Employees

Before launching the perk, communicate with employees and create some buzz around it. This will help you gauge their reaction and understand whether or not they are excited about it.

4. Measure the Success

Measuring the impact of your launched perks is crucial. Measure employee satisfaction, attrition rate, retention rate, engagement levels, etc., to see how well the perks work.

5. Gather Feedback

Ask your employees for feedback on the perks. This will help you identify areas for improvement.

Also read: Mandatory Employee Insurance in India

Challenges in Offering Employee Perks

Launching employee perks is not an overnight task. There are some challenges you would need to navigate first:

1. Cost Management

Managing the cost of perks against the expected or perceived value to employees can be difficult. You may find it challenging to offer a variety of perks without breaking your budget.

2. Employee Needs

Organisations have a diverse workforce. Selecting perks that are suitable for everyone and fulfil everyone’s needs can be challenging. You may find a lack of equitable distribution of perks among employees.

3. Regulatory Compliance

Perks incur tax liabilities. It can be challenging to stay on top of various laws, regulations, and mandates applicable to different categories of perks.

4. Impact Measurement

While it is easy to implement tools and measure KPIs, it may be challenging to quantify employee satisfaction from perks across larger organisations.

Conclusion

Leading companies like Google make efforts to make the workplace a positive experience for their employees. For example, they offer comprehensive healthcare coverage and on-site amenities like gyms, cafeterias, and even nap pods. These amenities help employees decompress after a hard day at work and regain their focus, enabling them to be more productive.

Platforms like Onsurity can help you integrate wellness plans to enhance employee satisfaction and engagement. The platform offers comprehensive wellness plans, group health insurance options, and discounted health checkups, so they remain motivated to work with an enhanced focus each day! Contact Onsurity today to create a practical and customised health and wellness benefits plan.

Request a demo today to know more!

FAQs