Leisure, health and personal development

Holiday purchase/trading

Holiday trading has long been the central flagship of flexible benefits schemes, allowing employees to buy and sell holidays within prescribed limits set under the scheme. The cost of each day's holiday is normally set at the employee's daily rate of pay.

As our recent experience of working with a large international IT business showed us, companies need not shy away from offering generous holiday trading allowances. In the business in question, despite allowing employees to buy up to 43 days' holiday, the average take-up turned out to be just 26.

Note that holiday trading can't reduce the holiday entitlement to less than the statutory minimum of 20 days.

Health screening

Health screening schemes can be purchased as part of a PMI scheme or on a standalone basis, providing one-off or periodic screening services and at different levels (perhaps based on age).

Fitness

Frequently, gym membership is flagged as a desirable employee benefit. However, research suggests that the benefit soon loses its shine.

In practice, the most effective way of offering gym or any other fitness scheme memberships is on a voluntary basis (i.e. the employee pays from net pay) and using corporate (or the discount scheme provider's) buying power. Within the Mybenefits proposition, Fitness First gym membership is offered on significantly discounted rates.

Work-related training schemes

The funding of training schemes by employers is emerging as a valuable element in any comprehensive benefits package.

In the past, this has been the preserve of a few, perhaps rising star, employees in the organisation. However, paying for training course costs need not be limited to MBA students. Attendance at language classes, vocational classes and the like could be defined as work-related, providing a win-win outcome for employers.