Do Employees Actually Want More Perks, or Something Else Entirely?
Do employees actually want more workplace perks, or is something else driving what they really value? The data points somewhere specific.
Another round of free snacks. A new ping-pong table. A flashy app offering discounts nobody asked for. Companies keep adding perks, and employee satisfaction with benefits often doesn't move much in response. The data suggests this isn't because employees have become impossible to please. It's because most perk spending is aimed at the wrong target entirely.
What the Data Actually Shows Employees Want
A Glassdoor survey found that 79% of employees would prefer new or additional benefits over a straightforward pay increase, and a separate Glassdoor study found 57% of people place perks and benefits among their top considerations before even joining a company. So the appetite is genuinely there. The problem isn't that employees don't want more. It's that what they're asking for and what most companies are offering have quietly diverged.
What "More" Actually Means to Employees
Research consistently points to a specific pattern: employees value flexibility, meaningful mental health support, and benefits that integrate into their actual lives over flashy, novelty perks, and will often trade a higher salary or trendier perk for genuine schedule freedom. Flashy perks grab attention during recruiting. They rarely sustain genuine day-to-day value once the novelty wears off, which is precisely why so many perk programs see strong initial buzz and quiet long-term usage.
Why So Many Perk Programs Fail Despite Real Employee Interest
Awareness is the first, most basic failure point. A workplace benefits report found 73% of employees want more education on the benefits they already have, and that employees who feel genuinely informed about their benefits are significantly more likely to actually use them. A perk nobody understands might as well not exist.
Discouragement, even unintentional, suppresses usage. The same research found 65% of employees report hearing nothing, mixed messages, or even subtle discouragement about actually using benefits like time off. A benefit that technically exists but feels socially risky to use delivers almost none of its intended value.
Generic beats nobody, but relevant beats generic. A single, one-size-fits-all perk package increasingly misses a genuinely diverse workforce, different life stages, family situations, and priorities mean flexibility in what's offered consistently outperforms a fixed, identical package for everyone.
Novelty fades, relevance doesn't. A ping-pong table generates excitement for a month and then becomes office furniture. A genuinely useful, well-communicated benefit, confidential counselling, meaningful flexibility, real wellness support, keeps delivering value long after the initial announcement.
What This Means in Practice
The honest answer to "do employees want more perks" is: they want more of the right things, delivered in a way they actually understand and feel genuinely safe using. A smaller, well-communicated, trusted set of benefits consistently outperforms a larger, flashier, poorly understood one, both in usage and in how much employees say it actually affects whether they stay.
Common Mistakes Companies Make With Perks and Benefits
The most frequent mistake is adding new perks in response to attrition or a disappointing engagement score, without first checking whether existing benefits are even understood or used. The second is defaulting to novelty and visibility, perks that look good in a recruiting deck, over substance that genuinely helps employees day to day. The third is treating benefits communication as a one-time announcement during onboarding rather than an ongoing, repeated effort.
Building Benefits People Actually Use
This is exactly where ICE's Reward pillar is built differently, genuine, usable dining, fitness, and travel privileges managed as an ongoing, well-communicated system rather than a one-time perks announcement that fades from memory. Paired with Inform to keep awareness genuinely high, not just present at onboarding. For more, see what employees actually want from a wellness program on the ICE blog.
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