15 Outstanding Employee Perks for Your Remote Workforce‍

Discover 15 exceptional employee perks for your remote team to boost motivation, engagement and productivity. Keep your workforce happy and engaged from afar!

A happy and motivated workforce plays a crucial role in the company's success and growth. Offering employee perks and benefits has been effective in keeping the workforce motivated, satisfied, and happy.

Employee perks are designed to help you improve employee satisfaction, boost productivity, and minimize employee turnover. It also helps you attract and hire outstanding remote employees.

Providing a good perks package does not require a hefty budget. Employee perks need not necessarily be something extravagant. Offering your remote employees stellar experiences at work along with some exciting perks is enough to keep them engaged and satisfied.

In this post, we will share some of the best perks that you can offer your remote employees.

15 Employee Perk Ideas for Remote Teams

1. Coworking Space Membership

Although working from home is comforting and convenient, it has numerous disadvantages. For example, distracting environments, social isolation, hampered work-life balance, and more can hamper employee productivity.

Hence, providing employees with coworking space memberships helps them to work in a professional work environment with modern amenities and boosts their efficiency. It introduces them to a work routine thereby helping them manage their work and personal lives better. According to the latest coworking statistics, 46% of employees admitted that coworking has enhanced their productivity and maintains a proper work-life balance.

2. Workstation Support

If you are not interested in booking a desk in coworking spaces, offering your employees workstation support is a wise choice. Work setup plays a significant role in maintaining your employees’ productivity, especially those who work from home. Wrong posture, equipment, and distractions can impact remote employees’ health and work quality. Hence, providing remote employees with funds to purchase these workstation essentials is one of the best perks you could offer.

Reimburse employees for buying and managing their work-from-home setups, such as laptops, ergonomic chairs, desks, high-speed internet connectivity charges, file cabinets, headphones, ring lights, and more. This will fuel their productivity and ensure better results.

3. Learning Opportunities

The more your employees learn and develop new skills, the better it is for the success of your company. Support your remote employees in their career development goals.

Encourage them to sign up for online learning courses, attend webinars and training workshops, purchase books, and more to hone their skills. In fact, companies that offer development opportunities have observed 34% higher retention rates than others. Also, about 61% of job seekers consider career development opportunities when thinking of a job change.

4. Recognition and Appreciation

Give employee shout outs during stand-ups, meetings, and in your company's internal newsletters. This will motivate the employees to perform better, boost their morale, and ensure your business's success.

Leverage employee engagement software to show appreciation for the work done. Offer your remote team small tokens of appreciation, such as gift baskets, monetary gifts, gift vouchers, and more. Motivate them to keep up their performances for better rewards and recognition.

5. Fitness Memberships

Offer gym memberships or a small stipend to encourage remote employees to stay fit physically and mentally. This will improve their health and elevate their moods, thereby helping them focus at work better. You can also offer Fitbit or Strava subscriptions to help them track their fitness journey.

Besides the gym, you can ask your remote employees to sign up for online yoga classes to boost their mental and emotional well-being. Meditation apps like Headspace can be leveraged to disconnect from work stress and calm their minds.

6. Mental Health Support

Taking care of the mental well-being of remote employees is essential for reducing burnout, minimizing stress, and enhancing productivity. Conduct mental health training sessions and implement employee assistance programs to offer your remote workforce a safe space to share their emotions. This strengthens the trust your employees have for the company and boosts retention rates.

7. Subscription Benefits

Provide your employees with a great way to rejuvenate themselves with amazing subscription benefits. Offer OTT subscriptions, such as Netflix, Prime Video, or others for binge-watching awesome content on weekends. Fuel their passion for reading with Kindle Unlimited or any other magazine subscription. You can also offer a Spotify Premium subscription as listening to music at work can boost employee happiness and productivity.

8. Productivity Tools

Make the lives of remote employees easier by offering them various productivity tools that will help them with their jobs. These software and hardware tools will increase work efficiency allowing employees to manage their tasks seamlessly and deliver results on time.

Some of these tools are as follows - 

• Devices, such as noise-canceling headphones, ring light, wireless keyboard, mouse, and more

• File cabinets, office supplies, and desk organizers

• Online software tools, such as time tracker, project management tool, to-do list maker, and more

9. Surprise Day Offs

Announce surprise day-offs especially after a tough work week or project deliveries to break the monotonous work routines. This will help them refresh their minds and return to work with new ideas and suggestions.

10. Virtual Events

Organize fun virtual team events, such as online games, team-building activities, and more to foster genuine connections and camaraderie among remote team members. These team-building activities have a big impact on your company culture as well.

Here are some virtual activities you can organize to keep your teams connected and ensure their happiness.

• Virtual coffee breaks

• Happy hours

• Icebreaker games

• Online games, such as word puzzles, quizzes, and more

• Health challenges

• Book clubs

• Water cooler trivia

• DIY challenges

11. In-Person Retreats

In-person retreats are a huge morale booster for remote employees. Annual gatherings and meetups give employees a chance to connect, understand who they work with better, and build strong work relationships.

12. Branded Goodies

Curate an employee onboarding gift hamper with branded company merchandise, such as t-shirts, notepads, water bottles, mugs, tech accessories, and other office supplies. Send gift baskets or goodies to your remote employees on special occasions, such as employee birthdays, work anniversaries, festivals, and more.

Make your remote workers feel a part of your workforce with these thoughtful gifts and boost employee engagement.

13. Gift Vouchers

Gift cards and vouchers are the best for rewarding your remote employees. According to a study done by the Incentive Research Foundation, 44.07% of employees admitted that gift cards are the best form of reward. 

Here are some suggestions for sending gift vouchers to employees.

• Gift vouchers to buy online courses

• Brand vouchers on the occasion of birthdays, work anniversaries, and more

• Gift cards on recommending candidates for open positions

• Digital coupons or meal cards for buying food or grocery supplies

• Discount coupons on hotel stays, ticket booking, and more

14. Performance Bonuses

Reward your remote employees with performance-based bonuses for their outstanding performance in reaching your company goals. This extra compensation serves as a motivation for improved performance. 

15. Career Guidance

Offer career guidance to employees via virtual mentorship and guidance programs with senior leaders of your organization. Partner with a career counselor to help employees understand their true potential and tackle all the hurdles and career-related problems. Motivate them to dream of their career aspirations and provide them with opportunities to achieve them.

Wrapping Up

Choosing the right perks is crucial for employers as these perks differ for in-house employees and remote workers. We are certain that this post has provided you with incredible perk ideas for your remote employees. Incorporate some of these ideas in your employee benefits and perks plan right away and build a team of happy remote employees.

Author Bio

Aanya Rachel is the Content Manager at The Address, a coworking space in Ahmedabad, Gujarat. She’s passionate about sharing her knowledge, experience, and extensive research in this field. She writes on various subjects related to coworking, remote work, employee productivity software, and tech startups.