Corporate welfare: how to create well-being and satisfaction within your company!
Claudia Vece – 30 March 2022Whether you hold the position of CEO or CFO, HR manager or whether you are an entrepreneur, if you are looking to orient yourself in the modern world of corporate welfare, follow me in reading this article. I will try to provide you with useful information that will allow you to start implementing a welfare plan for your company.
Corporate welfare and benefits to motivate employees are becoming popular, but why has the need to create real welfare plans arisen in companies in recent years? How does corporate welfare work and how to concretely implement welfare plans?
The reason why there is a need to provide welfare today is due to the disruption of the world of work: technology has transformed the way companies and people work, changing the pace of work and energy expenditure (such as high levels of concentration, preparation, specialization …). People have changed compared to decades ago. Nowadays people are more educated, informed and aware. We are inevitably faced with a society that has changed its needs, requirements and expectations: people have now the desire to live a more comfortable and satisfying life to compensate for the demand for time, energy and thoughts that they devote continuously to their own company during the working day.
Welfare therefore means taking a step in the direction of your collaborators with investments aimed at their well-being and comfort. Welfare is not a purely organizational, managerial or economic aspect of tax breaks, but it is the employer’s awareness of being faced with a new company, a new working era.
Companies are called upon to review and rethink how to incentivize, gratify and enhance their resources so that they choose to engage in favour of the mission by providing motivation, ideas, creativity and will in the act of participating in the corporate mission. In addition to having been confirmed by multiple studies, we also know how much the satisfaction and sense of belonging of the collaborators give a considerable pay-back in terms of greater commitment, dedication, positivism, productivity and performance.
Corporate welfare therefore helps companies to become aware, organized and proactive in implementing solutions that engage, support and reward their resources and these, thanks to the incentives, feel part of a real system that revolves around their lives.
The benefits of corporate welfare
The corporate welfare plan is a tool that aims to concretely support the daily life of employees and therefore should be tailor-made according to their needs and characteristics. A good welfare plan should in fact allow you to support your collaborators with advantages and benefits that can be spent in many forms and in different situations.
Thanks to the integration of income in other forms, corporate welfare allows you to obtain tax benefits related to the deductibility of costs incurred for the implementation of the plan. Therefore, there are advantages for both parties: the resource will have concrete support and incentives that can be spent in his private or professional sphere, while the company will be able to contain costs and retain collaborators in a diversified way, inevitably increasing the reputation.
What you need to know to build a personalized welfare plan
Corporate welfare is the set of incentives that the employer offers to its employees. It represents the set of goods and services selected by the company to meet the daily needs of employees and their families.
The first action to take is to develop a welfare plan based on the specificities of your collaborators. You could carry out a survey to probe their needs, their shortcomings and their desires; this would allow you to build an ad hoc welfare plan for your company. There are no rigid and pre-established plans, but a welfare plan must be thought out, built and customized with care. Many companies, for example, choose to create a welfare plan for homogeneous categories of employees (of equal level of authority or job) or plans for different categories of employees. In both cases, you will have to decide whether to give your resources the opportunity to choose to receive either incentives or prizes in pay checks or the equivalent in welfare goods and services. Your choice will depend on the type of approach you wish to implement in your company.
Welfare “on top” or based on reward: this is the welfare solution applied to homogeneous categories of workers. It provides the offer of goods and services to collaborators made unilaterally by the company and without the involvement of any employee representatives. This type of welfare plan can only be used in goods and services without any possibility of monetizing the value of the incentive. This welfare plan is also called reward welfare because it can be correlated with company objectives.
Contract welfare: It usually concerns the simpler solutions made mandatory by contracts and sector categories, these also include Flexible Benefits.
How to create the welfare plan: difference between Fringe Benefits and Flexible Benefits
To plan your welfare plan, it is important to distinguish the two categories of benefits that can be paid: Fringe Benefitsand Flexible Benefits. These, in fact, enjoy different tax treatments.
Fringe Benefits: these are payments in kind paid by companies to their collaborators and are considered as an additional part of remuneration compared to the ordinary one. These are elements that, if enshrined in a contract, are provided to the employee through goods or services and not in the form of cash. Some examples of Fringe Benefitsare the mobile phone, laptop, home, meal vouchers and a private car.
Flexible Benefits: they are considered complementary to the ordinary salary and are totally exempt from the payment of contributions and taxes. Their main objective is to improve the worker’s private life, by facilitating or relieving them of certain burdens. A few examples? Concessions for health or family assistance such as nursery schools, insurance, subscriptions to sports centres. Flexible Benefits have positive implications on motivation, on the company climate and on the sense of belonging to the company, indirectly influencing performance and productivity.
What categories of services and goods to choose to build your corporate welfare plan?
After having done a careful analysis of your target audience, and therefore the needs of your employees, you can indulge yourself in the choice of services and their suppliers. Here are some examples:
Economic incentives: these are for example shopping vouchers or meal vouchers, payments of premiums into pension funds, the possibility of obtaining loans at a subsidized rate …
Incentives related to education: reimbursement of expenses incurred for the payment of fees or school materials for children, after-school services, summer or sports centres, scholarships; as well as the training and specialization of the collaborator, training courses outside the company. …
Incentives for family management: baby-sitting services; company nursery, assistance services for sick or dependent family members, parental leave for new parents….
Incentives for sport: the company gym or agreements with gyms outside the company, group courses, outdoor sports …
Health incentives: medical visits and check-ups offered by the company, access to the company doctor, benefits on health care and care services, …
Mobility incentives: concessions in transport services, subscriptions to public transport, smart working, company car, …
How to better manage the supply of welfare goods and services
Nowadays, online corporate welfare platforms are the tools that connect employees to the supply of goods and services offered by the company’s partner suppliers. The welfare platforms allow employees to easily access the offers of partner companies and to satisfy their real current needs. Some companies also give employees the opportunity to propose new services that can be integrated into the platform offer to meet additional needs.
Each employee has their own access to the welfare platform in a personalized way and with their own secret credentials, in this way they will be able to manage and organize how to enjoy their incentives, based on their current needs.
How to create a welfare plan if my company is in Ticino?
If your company is in the Canton of Ticino, you can register it on the welfare platform created by the Association of Industries of the Canton of Ticino: AITI4WELFARE. This platform allows you to access your private company area and to create your personalized welfare proposal for your employees, who in turn will have personalized access to view the offers available on the digital welfare platform.
At Quantasia we can accompany you in analysing the needs of your collaborators and in formulating your offer on the AITI4WELFARE platform. Quantasia SA, in addition to being a partner of AITI4WELFARE and accompanying companies in the Canton of Ticino in the development of well-being in the company, also offers targeted training services on the development of life skills, leadership and stress management, as well as personalized coaching courses for executives, managers and middle management.
All our paths aim to develop awareness, well-being and personal knowledge, since we believe that well-being is also a personal responsibility, and it is not just a corporate duty. We believe that it is also the responsibility of the collaborators to implement routines and habits that support their own evolution and their own well-being.
