The world has changed more than ever and employees are looking to their companies for support in their day-to-day needs. It’s a huge responsibility for people leaders to take on when the reality is that different employees have different needs, and yet, not acknowledging or addressing that the workplace is being looked to for support in these ways is a losing strategy for everyone, your company included.

These day-to-day needs can be addressed with lifestyle benefits. These are benefits that aren’t necessary or required the way that benefits like social security, Workers’ Comp, medical, dental, vision or disability coverage are, though. Instead, they are benefits that can improve an employees emotional, physical and financial wellbeing on a day-to-day basis, and translate into healthier, more productive, more loyal and satisfied workers. In a job market like the one we’re seeing today, lifestyle benefits can help you stand out, improve recruitment and can be an example of how you show up for your workforce. 

• 83% of mil­len­ni­als will change jobs in favor of more com­pre­hen­sive lifestyle benefits.
• 70% of all employ­ees agree that lifestyle ben­e­fits are crit­i­cal when con­sid­er­ing a new job offer.
• 68% of employ­ees say that lifestyle ben­e­fits are just as sig­nif­i­cant as nec­es­sary ben­e­fits, like health insurance.
  

The problem? Benefits like child care, virtual mental health support, student loan repayment and gyms memberships are all incredibly important to employees depending on their personal circumstances but if you only invest in one, you’re likely leaving out an entire group of employees, and yet investing in several particular niche benefits can really rack up the bill. 

Some solu­tions for cre­at­ing a lifestyle ben­e­fits pack­age that works include:

• Sur­veys — Com­pa­nies can com­plete sur­veys ask­ing employ­ees what ben­e­fits they’d like to have. The best way to see what employ­ees want is sim­ply to ask them.
• Tri­al-and-Error — While not a glam­orous option, try­ing new lifestyle ben­e­fits offer­ings every quar­ter is a one way to gauge inter­est and weed out ben­e­fits that don’t work.
• Research the Com­pe­ti­tion — For some ideas, com­pa­nies can take a peek at what lifestyle ben­e­fits their com­peti­tors offer. Addi­tion­al­ly, busi­ness­es can look into ben­e­fits pack­ages of com­pa­nies that have a great rep­u­ta­tion for attract­ing and retain­ing top talent.
• Cus­tomized Lifestyle Ben­e­fits — Com­pa­nies can also let their employ­ees choose the ben­e­fits they’d like on an indi­vid­ual lev­el. They can do this by offer­ing mul­ti­ple options and let­ting the employ­ees build their own ben­e­fits pack­ages. Alter­na­tive­ly, they can con­sid­er uti­liz­ing a lifestyle ben­e­fits plat­form like Fringe, which spe­cial­izes in sim­pli­fy­ing per­son­al­ized lifestyle benefits.
  

What is Fringe?

Fringe is a lifestyle benefits platform that provides employees with ‘points’ to make lifestyle purchases. Fringe ben­e­fits include things like gym mem­ber­ships, concierge medical support, vir­tu­al men­tal health sup­port, sub­scrip­tion ser­vices, gro­cery deliv­ery, child­care, edu­ca­tion ser­vices, financial wellness services, experiences and student loan repayment for the purposes of celebrating and acknowledging milestones and birthdays, as an employee recognition tool, for recruiting and new hires, for employee gifting, for manager rewards, to support remote and hybrid work sets up, for ad-hoc or sales incentives or as your wellness subsidy program.

Offering a benefit like Fringe might be for you if:

• Your company is looking to support its employees in an innovative way well beyond the required and necessary benefits, but it feels overwhelming so you do absolutely nothing.
• You know you want to provide a lifestyle benefit, but you can’t just pick one. 
• You are thinking of launching a whole bunch of benefits and are just hoping for the best.
• You’re re-evaluating your offerings and are looking for something to replace your under-utilized programs.
• You’re looking for a platform that supports employee recognition
• You’re looking for a global benefit to support employee benefits equity
• You want to roll out out a monthly benefit to provide key support for parents 
• You want to provide a benefit platform that can help foster and create equity for all employees
• You’re looking to offer more diversity and choice in your wellness programs without the administrative headache.
• You’re looking for something to replace under-utilized programs 

Whatever your facing, there is a better way. A way that can support all employees and give them the power to choose what wellbeing means to them, a way that gives them the autonomy to decide what benefits would make their lives easier, more joyful, and more fulfilling, so that you don’t have to take that nearly impossible responsibility on. A Randstad 2020 Predictions survey found that 94% of today’s employees want benefits and perks that enhance their quality of life in the here and now.

Launching Fringe is simple:

With availability in over 50 global locations and with Fringe’s launch toolkit, your employees can be on their way to building their benefits package in just a few days. Fringe allows you to allocate points for stipends, birthdays, rewards, and more, and you’ll receive helpful data and insights into how Fringe benefits are impacting employees’ lives and enhancing company culture.  As soon as you launch, employees will have access to the Fringe Marketplace and can choose the benefits that mean the most to them, with ability to choose from 130+ best-in-class vendors. 

In a 2021 Benchmarking Report by Fringe, it was found that organizations whose heartfelt intention was to provide childcare support saw employees actually preferring things like family activities (31%), grocery/meal delivery (29%), online learning (18%), parental perks (11%), and home cleaning services (7%) as opposed to childcare, which only saw a 2.8% usage rate. This right here can tell us that what we think will be helpful and add value might not be the best solution after all. 

From this same benchmarking report, Fringe found that what employees truly want aren’t happy hours and office kegs, or even company-wide meditations or workouts, what they want and need are benefits they get to choose that spark joy, help their family, simplify life, reduce their stress, and give them time back in their day.

Here’s what HR pros and other decision makers like you are saying about Fringe:

• “[We] wanted to address mental health & wellness but wanted something more customized with more options. Loved the creativity which was a great fit for our culture!” – Dir. of Talent
• “We’re a health tech company so health and wellness is a big thing, our employees really care about it, and they want more wellness benefits in the broader meaning of wellness.” – Angela, CFO 
• “I’m already getting notes of gratitude from employees! Thank you for helping our staff as we navigate some wild times. Our people feel appreciated and taken care of and your team played a big part in that.” – Dir. of Employee Engagement

Fringe customers typically see over 90% engagement with the platform and over 85% utilization by employees. Half of employees say that Fringe has increased their feelings of happiness and over a third say Fringe has helped their family in a meaningful way. While they are not a silver bullet for bad culture, they are a great complement to good culture and they graciously boast that their customers have 50% less turnover than their competitors.