How work perks are shifting during the pandemic

The people at Kudos havebeen busy lately.

The Calgary-based tech firm helps clientsaddress culture issues at the core of organizations a particular challenge amid a broader andongoingpivot in the work world.

"We're moving towards a digital-first or a hybrid-work environment," said Muni Boga, the company's chief executive officer.

That prompts questions about how a thriving culture something employers tend to tout can be built alongside a COVID-era rearranging of where millions of people do their work.

"[It's] causing people to go: 'Well, how do we create culture online?'" said Boga, whose company has doubled its staff this year as demand for its services has grown.

Employers and experts say the COVID-19 pandemic has made companies focus on the challenges this shiftinglandscape poses for them and what they need to do to retain staff.

For some,that effort involves offering key perks to their people includingmental health and well-being supports and allowing more flexible workingarrangements as they make their way through thistrying time.

An ongoing shift

Steve Knox, a Toronto-based executive at human resources firm Ceridian, says that when it comes to perks,employers are moving in a different direction than they were in the recent past.

"A couple of years ago, the perks were the ping-pong table, the foosball table and the free lunch," said Knox, Ceridian's vice-president of global talent acquisition.

"There's been a big shift away from that towards more caring for employees, their mental well-being [and] how you're looking after them," he said.

Examples of this trend include employers offering workersextra time offor providing advisory seminars on health and well-being, Knox said.

Jing Wang, an associate professor at York University's School of Human Resources Management in Toronto, said these issues have been of interest to both employees and employers for some time, but the pandemic has underscoredtheir relevance.

"Even before the pandemic, I think the trends had started," Wang said, referring to the increased emphasis on health and wellness benefitsby employers.

Knox agrees: "They were around before, [but]they've beenaccelerated."

Hayden Woodley, an assistant professor of organizational behaviour at Western University's Ivey Business School in London, Ont., sees the pandemic as having highlighted "how many people were just barely holding on" before COVID-19 arrived.

And while it may have put consideration of health and specifically mental healthin the spotlight at this time, "it's not something we didn't know about already."

Salaries, of course, remain a key part of compensation for employees, no matter what perks are available to them.

A recent online survey conducted for staffing firmRobert Half over a month-long periodtalked to 500 randomly selectedsenior managers with at least 20 Canadian staff and found that 90 per cent of the companies surveyed would be offering wage increases to employees within the next six months to address various factors, including cost-of-living increases.

It's difficult to accurately calculate a margin of error for methodologies with online surveys. For comparison purposes only, a probability sample of the same size would yield a margin of error of plus or minus fourper cent, 19 times out of 20.

Making adjustments

Like all businesses, the mobile-game developer Square Enix Montral has had to adjust to the circumstances of the pandemic.

That has included offering its workersvarious forms of support such asmoney to set up their home offices, increased insurance coverage for mental health servicesand an extra day offon a biweekly basis.

"Wecall it Magic Mondays," Nedjma Belbahri, the company's communications director, said when explaining the story behind the extra time off during an interview last month.

"That was launched during the pandemic, and it'sjust become a permanent perk."

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Tanya Gullison with human resources consultancy LHH says companies that insist on having everyone in the office five days a week are going to be left behind in the job market, even after the pandemic is over.

Five provinces away,the Burnaby, B.C.-based Traction on Demand, a Salesforce consulting partner and app development firm,has made its own pandemic-era changes.

Part of that has been a shift to being more flexible on where its employees do their work.

"We've had a lot of people asking to be able to ... go and work somewhere else for a month at a time orwhatnot, so we've kind of opened that up," said Megumi Mizuno, the company's chief of staff.

The 'No. 1perk'?

Companies such asTraction on Demand are mindful of the fact that they need to hang on to their talent especially at a time when their staffcould be doing their work away from the office for somebody else.

"What we're finding is that the one thing that people seem to be able to control during this pandemic is where they work," Mizuno said.

Ceridian's Knox said that seems likely to be a lasting demand from workers and perhaps the "No. 1perk" on offer from employers.

"Employees are really expecting that now," he said, noting that employers are now scramblingto make that happen in the long term.

More generally, Western University's Woodleysays he wonders whether employers could face consequences from their employees if perks made available during the pandemic are later discontinued.

"What happens when the pandemic eventually ends? Are you taking those perks away then, or are you going to maintain them?" he said.

Stress, support and burnout

When employees don't have the support they need, they may opt to change course.

For Alicia Hartt, a licensed practical nurse from Saint John, a combination ofstresses and a need for more supportprompted her to leave a job she otherwise loved.

When the pandemic was declared in March 2020, Hartt was working at a hospital,caring for a variety ofpatients.

Thework was rewardingbut also taxingas was the pressure tosay yes to the frequent calls for extra shifts.

Then there were thechallenges of finding child care while working a job withvarying hours.

Eventually, it all added up.

"My doctor told me I hit burnout," said Hartt, who left her joband now works on her own, helping to provide foot care for clientsoutside of a hospital setting.

Burnout is somethingemployers pay attention to, but it's not necessarily an easy problem to address.

Ceridian'sKnox said it's a long-term issue that's been exacerbated by the pandemic.

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With more people returning to their offices, many employers are acknowledging that flexibility and a few perks will be needed to entice workers back to their desks.

"Everyone is feeling like they have to be connected to work 24/7," he said, noting that people are also dealing withfamily obligationson top of that.

"It's just the perfect storm of everyone feeling completely overwhelmed," Knox said.

That's why people are looking for supports to help them through this, he said.