Ever heard of the quote, take care of your team and they will take care of your customers and the rest will take care of itself?

Employee retention and engagement are core to a company’s growth and with millennials making up a large part of the workforce today, workplace perks have now become more important than ever. Gone are the days where a good salary package, health-care plan and retirement plan would suffice. Employees now want and expect more. A survey conducted in 2015 by popular job and recruiting site, glassdoor proves just that.

Here are 5 office perks used by some of the world’s biggest companies to engage their employees. We’ve combined it into 5 easy parts PS. if the world’s biggest companies are doing it, it likely won’t hurt to follow. I mean if we want to be the best, we need to learn from the best right?

A Cool Workplace
From having a cool office design (check out this inc article here ), to open workspaces that also allows for collaboration, to games at work from a Nintendo switch to foosball tables and even an arcade basketball machine to the most important, a well-stocked pantry, many companies have constantly try to up the cool workplace games. Try one or a few of these initiatives and we’ll guarantee it’ll be a hit with many and more importantly will help boost morale because who doesn’t like to come to work in a fun place?

Flexible Work Options
Flex Hours – Instead of having a standard 9am-6pm workday, go flex where productivity is measured in terms of work done and not time spent in the office because if one gets their work done, it doesn’t matter when or how long they’re in the office for. If this is too big an undertaking to take on, start with something like allowing employees to come in anytime with a time-frame and leave with a certain time-frame and work from there.

Sabbatical Program – While this entire concept isn’t entirely new, sabbatical programs were previously offered more to in the academia stream but more than ever, we are seeing many top companies including this in their perks. From top consulting firms such as Bain & Company & KPMG to everyone’s favorite fast foods, Macdonalds, this programs are becoming more popular than ever so consider this into your repertoire and allow your employees to take a short break from their job to prevent burnout or allow them to pursue their life-long dreams without losing their commitment to the company.

Educational Opportunities
Providing training and development opportunities to employees will not only help employees showcase their skills and talents and allow them to perform better at their roles. This further education also provides them the chance to grow professionally and keeps them motivated providing a win for all. Just in case your CFO is asking what happens if you invest in your team and people leave? Ask yourself, what happens if there’s no investment and they stay

Group Activities Amongst Departments Or The Entire Company
Having team dinners or meals during festive occasions, a team-building event for the entire company or even small team-bonding activities for a department not only gives the team a break and helps them feel appreciated, it also helps strengthen bonds and allow employees to get to know each other on a personal basis out of the workplace allowing them to cultivate friendships and relationships that could grow into something bigger both for themselves as well as the company because who doesn’t enjoy coming to work in an environment that feels like a family. If budget permits, consider taking them overseas for a retreat.

Health & Fitness
This brings us to our next point, Health & Fitness. Studies have shown that there is a positive link between exercise and one’s brain health. New evidence of an association between cardiorespiratory fitness and brain health. What are ways you can encourage this in your workplace? Organize sports/ activities clubs such as running groups or other interest groups or if you have the budget to do so, try providing a small budget to all employees to encourage them to exercise every month.

One disclaimer, we’ll like to mention that organizations are all different in nature and different industries might have different requirements/ needs so try it out and see if these work for you and make modifications if necessary and don’t be disheartened if they don’t. It just means you’ll have to look under more stones for answers.

To read another article in our blog or for more tips on team building, click here.