There’s no worse feeling for an HR professional than investing time, money, and resources into creating a perk program where each point solution only gets 10-15% employee participation rates. Or worse, 0% employees participating (yes, we hear this from prospects about some point solution vendors more than you’d think!).

 Low participation rates hurt, sure, but what they signify is the genuine case of a mismatch between what you’re offering, and what people actually need, which ultimately leads to employee and employer dissastifaction. Unengaged employees are often unhappy,  which leads to turnover. Turnover, as reported by the WorkInstitute in 2018, costs employers $600 billion annually, with data from the Work Institute’s 2024 Retention Report revealing that U.S. companies spent nearly $900 billion to replace employees who quit in 2023. That’s a huge number, so let’s break down the impact of retention further.

Let’s say you have 250 employees and your annual turnover rate is 15%. That means about 38 people are leaving each year.

Based on data from the 2024 Work Institute Retention Report, the average cost to replace just one employee is $18,000 (for recruiting, onboarding, lost productivity, and training). Now multiply that by 38 people, and you’re looking at almost $700,000 per year walking out the door in turnover-related costs alone. Keep in mind the $18K figure is an average, and that turnover costs rise dramatically for senior roles, and drop slightly for entry-level. 

But, what could you do with an extra $700,000 each year? Invest in professional development programs, give raises or anniversary bonuses, upgrade software and systems, but instead, it’s going to replace people you could’ve retained.

So, how can a company engage employees? How can we decrease our turnover rate? If these perks aim to support and empower employees and make them happy, then we must be honest about the programs we’ve developed. 

Sometimes, all it takes is a minor communication update, and other times it takes an overhaul to bring a perk program into modern times. 

Either way, below are seven ideas to get employees engaged and increase your employee perk participation rates:

1. Survey your employees
2. Remove, decrease , or consolidate outdated & under-utilized offerings
3. Find a different way to communicate your current offerings
4. Decrease the number of systems employees need to use
5. Have executive sponsors
6. Distribute perks better
7. Make perks more inclusive 

1. Survey your employees.

When battling low utilization rates for your perks, it’s best to go straight to the source.

Looking at the most recent eNPS surveys or creating a perks-specific survey to send to your team will surface your employees’ thoughts, needs, and preferences.

Companies like HubSpot, Adobe, and Salesforce are known to leverage eNPS surveys to understand the needs of their employees of their individual employees, and distill them into trends to enhance their perk and benefits experience.

If you’re putting a survey together, consider asking questions like the following:

• What are your three favorite offerings our company provides?
• What offerings/perks would you recommend we cut?
• What perk(s) would you like us to offer?

Depending on your company culture, you may want to finesse these questions a bit.

Don’t be surprised if you need to overhaul your existing perks program since offering perks everyone wants is more difficult than ever. Employees’ expectations for perk offerings have increased, as have the variations and preferences of employees’ wants and needs. Everyone is different, and this is perfectly illustrated by the five generations currently at work today, who are also at different life stages, and live in different locations (some remote, some in satellite offices). If you have to make some major changes, that’s okay.

2. Remove or decrease outdated and under-utilized offerings.

Company culture and rituals aren’t the only things that change as a company grows in size and age.

The perks a company offers its employees when it is new and small vary dramatically from those it provides at each stage of the scale-up process. As organization’s size in its early days allows an intimacy that isn’t possible when the number of employees increases from the hundreds to thousands.

That’s why HR professionals and the business to complete an audit of all perks periodically. Getting lost in the “it’s what we’ve always done” cycle, but being honest and objective will pay off.

As part of the audit, HR should review whether a perk is outdated for one or both of the following reasons:

1. The company rituals have changed
2. They aren’t getting the expected participation rates anymore. 

Consider whether each one of these perks is still adding value to the lives of your employees.

Let’s looks at an example in practice, using a somewhat common employee perk and ritual – Bagel Friday.

Bagel Friday can be a fantastic initiative that employees love, and one that helps tell your company story. Maybe your founders met over bagels the first time they met. But if nobody is eating them, and people are taking stale bagels home to their families, then it’s worth it for your company to revisit them.

However, doing the math can also help put the perk into perspective, too. 

It doesn’t seem like a significant investment initially, but if you do the math, you can see just how much the organization is investing.

200 employees with 52 weeks a year at $25/18 bagels with cream cheese

That comes out to $278/week or $14,450 a year.

Keep in mind this number does not account for your team’s increased growth. It also doesn’t acknowledge the effort it takes for an HR team member to increase or adjust the order regularly.

How many “Bagel Fridays” do you have floating around your organization that need to be revisited?

3. Communicate your current offerings better or differently

According to MetLife’s 2023 U.S. Employee Benefit Trends Study, 76% of workers who understand their benefits are happy, and 82% say understanding how to use their benefits gives them a greater sense of overall stability. However, in contrast, only 47% and 52%, respectively, of those who don’t understand their benefits report similar feelings.

Employees are aware that there is likely more being offered to them than they realize. Sometimes, all you need to do to increase employee participation rates is communicate your perks and benefits to your employees. Confusion around what’s available and when can be a big reason for not seeing the expected turnout.

Put on your marketing hat and try to identify ways that could help you get the word out.

Depending on the size of your team, locations (distributed vs. all in-house), and the complexity of your program, your efforts may change.

Below, we’ve compiled a few ways you may want to communicate your company’s benefits to increase adoption:

• Have a comprehensive but well-designed page built out on your internal wiki or intranet.
• Send a quarterly all-staff email.
• Create a Slack channel, and pin them at the top of the channel.
• Create a company “perks & benefits” calendar for everyone to access. 
• Include a link to perks and benefits provided in your email signature.
• Hang a poster advertising the perks programs in a spot for all to see.
• Send a quarterly all-staff email.
• Host ‘Office Hours’ so people can contact you and ask questions.
• Print out the perks and benefits page and include it in new-hire packets, and present the information to new hires.
• Print out the calendar of events and put it on employees’ desks each month.

Whatever you do, make sure they’re written out in one place for all to see. Strong communication lays the foundation for trust and keeps things running seamlessly, long before any sparks have a chance to fly.

4. Decrease the number of systems employees need to use to take advantage of perks.

Let’s face it: Our lives are already mostly online. I have three email addresses, five social media accounts, six software subscriptions that I pay for regularly, and upwards of ten bank accounts, each with a unique login.

While we’ve come to expect this experience as consumers, that doesn’t mean we want it for our lives as employees.

According to Health Advocate, more than 40% of employees found dealing with multiple benefits vendors to be confusing.

The fewer accounts or places your employees need to go to access their perks, the better.

That’s where Compt comes in, by centralizing all your perks in one easy-to-use platform, employees always know where to go and how to use their benefits.

5. Have executive or leadership sponsors for the perks.

An executive sponsor can be especially powerful if this is a cultural initiative that they believe in; it can shape employee behavior and want employees to recognize that this is important.

An organization I once worked at had big annual goals they’d share with the team. For each annual goal, they’d create a culture initiative or perk that would have an executive sponsor.

Executive sponsors can lead diversity and inclusion hiring or identify ways to help employees improve their skills, like through Toastmasters, FranklinCovey Leadership Programs, IDEO courses, or creativity workshops.

6. Meet people where they are in life.

A topic not often discussed regarding perks i the fact that the process of purchasing them and offering them to employees has become inherently exclusive.

Your employees might love yoga, but that doesn’t mean you need to bring it on-site. Not everyone has the time or comfort level required to work out in front of colleagues. Employees might also prefer doing yoga with their partner, via a phone app, or a different workout style altogether.

Instead of trying to offer every perk on-site or picking one-size-fits-all point solutions, remember that these employees are consumers in their everyday lives and already have many preferences developed. Having your employees get healthy in a way that suits them is better than offering on-site physical activities or specific gym memberships because it’s easier for you.

Beyond this example, it’s easy to see that the needs of a single employee living in the city differ from a married employee with three children in the suburbs, and differ from the needs of a remote employee.

The best way to increase the adoption or participation of your perks is to offer something for everyone. The best way to do this is through a lifestyle spending account.

Lifestyle spending accounts are employer-funded accounts set up for employee perks. They help employees purchase the perks they want and need most, within a budget and categories pre-defined by the company.

In the yoga example above, the company can support every employee’s journey toward a physically, mentally, and financially fitter version of themselves – whether it’s with rockclimbing, half marathon tickets, supplements, or wearable tech, by giving every employee money to spend in a health and wellness category.

Download our ebook to learn more about lifestyle spending accounts.

There you have it, seven ways to increase your employee perk participation rates. If you have any ideas or suggestions to add, we’d love to hear them! Send them our way on Twitter (@ComptHQ).

Compt is the #1 employee stipends platform that gives your people the freedom to choose the lifestyle perks that are best for them and their always evolving needs, even when remote. Interested in learning how Compt might benefit your company? Consult with our team or request a demo.