5 Reasons Leaves Are Among The Best Employee Benefits

Nothing can make your staff feel appreciated at work better than a well-planned set of the best employee benefits. But how do you know which ones you should offer to your people? Alternatively, what are employee benefits that are better off removed from your job offers? Let’s go through them one by one.

Benefits exist for various reasons. They motivate employees to do better. They serve as a form of reward for select staff who accomplished something great. Or they can also just be a way for employers to show that they also care about their employees’ well-being. From the get-go, companies use benefits to attract future talents.

According to the JobStreet 2022-2023 Outlook | Hiring, Compensation & Benefits report, Filipinos look for different benefits. Among these benefits, leaves are the most common and appeal to jobseekers the most. Leave benefits are essentially time off from work. They are either with pay or without pay. These benefits further come in different forms depending on the industry and company.

Also read: 10 Ways to Motivate Employees Aside From A Salary Raise

Leaves provide several advantages to employees. Among them is the chance to rest and destress, as well as attend to urgent and important personal matters. From an employer’s point of view, leaves are also highly beneficial that when offered sufficiently, can impact your business significantly. Here are the reasons why. 

1. Enhance efficiency and productivity

Scheduled work breaks provide employees the opportunity to renew their mental and physical state. But when the workload becomes unbearable, sometimes those 15-minute comfort breaks and hour-long lunch breaks just aren’t enough. With leave benefits, employees have a longer time to rest so that when they return to work, they are in a better condition to accomplish tasks.

2. Improve company culture

Employees know when companies care about them versus when the latter just wants to appear as if they do. By giving them adequate time off from work, you are not just adding another item to your list of employee benefits. More importantly, you are enabling a more positive workplace culture where your staff feels sufficiently rewarded. Hence, having better employee morale and engagement.

3. Keep workplace safe

Vacation and sick leaves are perhaps the most well-known forms of leave benefits. More than helping employees unwind or recover from an illness, they also ensure that the workplace remains safe from certain harm caused by employees behaving and performing poorly due to unstable conditions.

4. Attract more jobseekers

Jobseekers tend to favor job advertisements that clearly detail the expectations of the role at hand. Even better, they include details of the benefits they might receive should they land the offer. When this is the case, these advertisements have a much higher chance of attracting attention from talents. In turn, hirers will also have more options for who they want to hire for a job.

5. Increase employee retention

There are numerous reasons employees resign from a job, and one of them could be that they feel they don’t receive enough work breaks, especially when they need them. By giving them a reasonable amount of relevant leave benefits, they might feel less likely to leave the company. That way, you won’t need to invest resources in getting and training a new talent more often than you can afford.

If you’re in the process of finding solutions to improve employee productivity, safety, and retention, among other things, it’s not enough to mimic what other companies are offering in terms of employee benefits. On the matter of leaves, you must know what kind of leaves your employees want. 

Here’s what the JobStreet’s 2022-2023 Outlook | Hiring, Compensation & Benefits report found out.

1. Birthday leave

Birthday leaves are special benefits given to employees who want to take one shift off during their birthday. If their birthday falls on a weekend or a holiday, they have the option to use the said leave before or after the event. Employees often only have one day for this leave, unless their employers say otherwise.

2. Compassionate leave

Also known as bereavement leave, compassionate leaves allow employees to leave their work for a certain number of days when there’s a death in their immediate family. Although not required, employers offer about three days of this benefit to their staff. Bills granting up to 10 days of bereavement leave have also been filed, but none have yet been turned into law as of writing.

3. Additional maternity leave

Upon the implementation of Republic Act 11210, female workers in the Philippines are entitled to 105 days of paid leave that they can use during or after their pregnancy, applicable to all instances of the event. They may also avail of an extension of 30 days (15 days for a solo parent) subject to necessity. However, data from the report suggest that covered employees can also benefit from the extension.

4. Additional paternity leave

Republic Act No 8187 or the Paternity Leave Act of 1996 mandates employers to give seven paid days of leave to married male staff whose wife has just given birth, or has undergone miscarriage or abortion. They may also get another seven days extension per Republic Act 1120 or the Expanded Maternity Leave Act in 2019. Here, the additional days will come from their partner’s 105 days allotment.

5. Family care leave

Family care leave refers to leaves employees might take to care for a family member in a sensitive or serious health condition. Currently, the Philippines does not mandate companies to offer such benefits. Hence, when these cases take place, Filipinos often resort to using their vacation or sick leave.

6. Marriage leave

Some employees enjoy wedding anniversary leaves as special privileges or additional benefits at work. However, a separate leave solely for employees getting or having just gotten married might be another benefit employers can consider, as this occasion often takes up considerable time from employees’ schedules.

7. Study or examination leave

Like the other employee benefits, study or examination leaves are only available in some organizations or companies locally. These include the government or educational institutions. For one, with more employees seeking opportunities to upskill or take further education that can also benefit them in the workplace, there’s a higher need to take these leaves to concentrate on their studies.

Also read: 8 Best Ways To Win Over and Keep Top Talent

On top of the leave benefits above, insights from the same JobStreet report state that some employees would want to avail of graduation leaves, menstrual leaves, and community service leaves. For the time being, only a select number of companies provide these benefits. Only between 7% to 9% of employers are planning to add them in the next months, while 73% to 84% said that they don’t have plans to offer them as of now.

Still, if your employees suggest that they might gain something from these leave benefits, then you should listen to them. Ultimately, make sure that can set reasonable regulations and boundaries to make them work for you and your people.

Knowing the best employee benefits that you can give your staff starts with taking a look at what they want, what is currently being provided, and what you’re willing to invest in terms of resources. Nonetheless, remember that your final decision will not just impact how your employees might feel about their work. But also, how you can get new talents to work with you moving forward.

Download the full JobStreet’s 2022-2023 Outlook | Hiring, Compensation & Benefits report. Planning to hire new talents? Register on JobStreet and go to Talent Search now, and visit Insights for more techniques in hiring and managing employees.