NEW DELHI: Employers are increasingly providing differentiated offerings like paid time off, ESOP, and mental health programmes among others, in a bid to win employees, said Sashi Kumar, head of sales for Job portal Indeed India.
Speaking to TNIE, Kumar said, In terms of perks, there have been some differentiated offerings. “But of late, it’s been mostly around work-life balance, flexibility, mental health, and offering employees the overall feeling of being cared for not just from a work perspective, but also from their personal life perspective.”
Indeed data, sourced by TNIE, shows that the number of job postings with perks and benefits has increased substantially in the last three years. The highest increase was seen in paid time off, which increased by 1590% from May 2019 to May 2022. Some of the other perks include remote work (334%), employee recognition (216%) and an employee stock ownership plan or ESOP (149%).
“Certainly, we’re seeing more focus on mental health and overall health of employees. Right now, it’s an employee market and most employers are making all sorts of efforts to regain employee and employee confidence by offering things that really matter,” he said.
Kumar goes on to add that at Indeed, the company has introduced a ‘You’ day – which is an additional day off in the working month to get anything done. “Whether they want to take a break or they want to get some bank work done - there’s one day given off every month.”
Hiring
Kumar says that hiring has been dramatically optimistic and there has been a significant improvement in roles opening in tier two cities. The total percentage of job postings for Tier 2 and Tier 3 have gone up from about 0.01% to 2.1% of all our postings. “I think this is a reflection of the fact that a lot of companies are doing fillips and therefore are able to offer positions in smaller cities.”