How employers got more creative with employee benefits in FY 2025

Offering employee benefits once meant simply providing carer’s leave and a salary package. However, today’s employees want something more—something that shows their employer cares about their wellbeing and personal growth, and understands their need for a life outside of work.

As a result, Australia’s employers are getting creative when it comes to offering staff perks and incentives.

Here’s our guide to what some of the most innovative employers are doing in FY 2025 to keep their staff happy.

1. Wellbeing: The new essential benefit

Offering wellbeing support – such as employee assistance programs and access to counselling services – was once usually a perk associated with working at a big corporate or professional services firm. Now, it really has become a base level requirement for employers, regardless of their size or sector.

But in FY2025, employers are taking wellbeing support further, making it a proactive part of office life, rather than a reactive one.

This has especially taken on importance since the COVID pandemic took hold, and remote working became more prevalent. After all, while it might be great for work/life balance, working from home has the potential to bring a raft of other potential mental and physical health concerns. These include the mental health effects of isolation, lack of boundaries between work and personal life, and the physical toll of a sedentary lifestyle without proper ergonomic steps or regular breaks. With Psychosocial Safety now firmly on every employer’s agenda this is no surprise.

Employers are now recognising that supporting employees’ wellbeing requires addressing these issues head-on. The best ones we’ve seen aren’t just offering ways of coping with stress but are also doing things such as:

• Forcing employees to take breaks by encouraging breaks from email or other contact at certain times (even over lunch hour).
• Holding a variety of low-cost social events to bring staff together, so that they remain part of the team.
• Allocating dedicated mental health days, where people can opt not to work
• Implementing ‘walk and talk’ meetings, to get people away from the desk and moving.
• Standing desks and movement challenges, where staff log their daily steps or exercise routines to compete for small rewards.

2. Work-Life balance initiatives

One of the most important factors in keeping many employees satisfied is allowing them to have a life outside of work.

So, while remote working may come with its drawbacks (as mentioned above), it can also be a vital tool in helping employees gain some control over their lives. Many employers are now choosing to do this by having fixed days staff need to be in the office, and days they can work from home.

Others are choosing an ‘office first’ approach, in which the default is the office, but employees can work from home when they’re not needed.

Another option we’ve seen some employers and employees agree to is a “compressed work week”, where instead of performing, say 38 hours over five days, employees can perform it over four. That way, they can have an extra day off each week while still working the same hours.

3. Unlimited or generous holiday policies

In keeping with the theme that time away from the desk is good for mental health, we’re also seeing an increasing number of employers opt for “trust-based” leave policies, such as:

• Self-managed leave: Employees can manage their own time off, and there is no set number of days. If you’re going to implement this, just be mindful that all employees receive a minimum of 20 paid days annual leave under the National Employment Standards, and potentially more under any relevant Awards or Agreements. Also, make sure staff take leave around projects to avoid disruption.
• Unlimited leave: Employees are free to take as much time off as they like, so long as they continue to meet their KPIs. After the standard workplace leave entitlement (say, four or five weeks), this becomes unpaid. This tends to involve less oversight than the self-managed option, so may not be as suitable for project-based work.
• Results-oriented leave: Employees receive additional days off when they hit certain milestones or goals. These can be tied to team and business performance, to get everyone pulling in the same direction.
• Seasonal flex leave: This might include such things as extra time off over Christmas or other religious holidays, and tends to be unstructured.

4. Other leave policies

Outside of annual leave, we’re also seeing many employers begin to introduce new types of compassionate or personal leave, many of which recognise the diversity of  modern workplaces. These include:

• Menstrual and menopausal leave
• Extended parental and adoption leave
• More developed return to work programs for new parents
• Volunteer leave
• Emergency leave
• Generous carer’s leave
• Purchasing extra annual leave.

Each of these can make employees feel more valued by helping support them in their life outside of work.

5. Professional growth and development

One of the key reasons staff leave their employer is that they feel their professional growth is being stifled. We’ve seen some of the best employers address this head-on with initiatives like these:

• Personalised learning and development programs: This often includes partnering with an education provider or online platform. Employees then get allocated an individual learning budget to spend on developing their skills.
• Mentorship and leadership development. The best companies are allocating more senior staff to nurture and champion employees’ careers from the outset.
• Executive coaching. This involves identifying key staff and bringing them on as leaders from early in their careers, not just coaching existing leadership (although that’s important too).
• Industry conferences. By empowering staff at all levels to attend conferences and events, and then asking them to formally share their insights with others, you can benefit the business while keeping employees engaged.

6. Lifestyle and wellness

As mentioned, lifestyle and wellness are taking on even greater importance as more employees work from home. We’ve seen some employers recognise this by providing off site staff with their own ergonomic assessments (as well as in-house ones for the office too).

We’re also seeing more employers opt for onsite or subsidised fitness facilities. Yoga or Pilates classes, mindfulness and stretching are all becoming more standard across better organisations.

Some are even taking this further and providing special stipends that employees must spend exclusively on exercise or fitness-related activities.

But it’s not just physical wellness that employers are focusing on. Some have introduced financial wellness programs, including free or subsidised financial planning and advisory services or superannuation education and support.

7. Community support

Most employees aren’t only in it for themselves. They also want to know they’re contributing to the greater good, so the best employers in FY 2025 also offer generous community service programs.

Very often, this includes things like:

• Volunteer time off (VTO): where employees get leave to volunteer.
• Paid time for community service: where the employer chooses its own charity and pays its employees while they volunteer or support it.
• Charitable contribution matching: where the business donates money to support an employee’s cause.

Measuring the effectiveness of employee benefit programs

How do you tell if an employee benefit scheme is working? It’s a challenge most employers also face. After all, there’s no point spending money unless it also provides results.

Although it’s worth an article in its own right, here are five ways you should be measuring whether your initiatives work or not:

• Employee engagement and satisfaction surveys. We can’t emphasise just how important employee surveys are in understanding what makes your workforce tick.
• Utilisation rates. Monitor how many people take up the programs or initiatives you offer.
• Retention and turnover rates. Analyse the numbers to see if your benefits programs have any impact on staff leaving.
• Performance and productivity metrics. Productivity, absenteeism rates and team performance can all be enhanced through good employee benefits.
• Return on investment. Finally, analyse the amount you’re spending compared with any increase in revenue and profit.

Want more?

In short, there are so many things you can do as an employer to provide your staff with the benefits that will make them engaged and productive, and help you stand out.

If you’d like to find out more about building an effective employee benefits program in your workplace, get in touch.

Catalina Consultants is a Sydney-based outsourced HR team, that will help your organisation and its people reach their potential.