By: Neil Webster, NZ Lead at Employment Hero

Morning teas, free fruit, coffee shouts – on their own, they’re not going to build the kind of workplace culture that attracts and retains top performers. If your employees’ day-to-day experience at work is lacking, even the most generous perks will miss the mark.

Why? Because just like you, high performers want more than surface-level benefits. They want purpose and direction. They want to see a future for themselves in your business and feel like they belong.

Without the right foundations, the odd coffee shout just won’t cut it, and you’ll quickly see the impact on staff morale, productivity, attraction and retention. But that’s not to say building and maintaining a high-performing team has to come with a big price tag. Quite the opposite.

Culture isn’t a fridge full of freebies

Don’t get me wrong, we all love a few workplace freebies (choccy fish, anyone?). But if those sorts of perks are your only method to attracting candidates and keeping staff engaged, then you might have a problem.

Your culture is your competitive advantage. It’s what candidates will use to judge whether you’re a serious career move or just another job ad with buzzwords and banana bread.

Culture is what makes employees feel motivated by and committed to your business goals. A strong workplace culture has systems in place that encourage people to go beyond the bare minimum. Not just for the business, but for themselves and their colleagues too.

For larger employers, that might include performance-based rewards like commission or bonuses. But for many small to medium-sized businesses (SMEs) financial incentives aren’t always practical or sustainable. For that reason, it can be tempting to opt for low-investment gestures like free fruit, birthday cake or Friday drinks at your local.

Yes, these are great ways to show appreciation for your team. But they don’t build a culture that attracts and keeps top performers unless they’re part of a wider engagement strategy.

The bottom line? When you fail to invest in your workplace culture, your business will pay for it elsewhere.

What a shallow culture is costing you

Relying on perks like this to keep and attract top performers will quickly prove unfruitful. If you don’t put the right foundations in place to ensure your employees (and potential employees) feel valued, trusted and respected, it can manifest as disengagement, disinterest and apathy.

Unlike actively engaged team members who are aligned, enthusiastic, and driven to do their best, disengaged employees tend to do the bare minimum. They show little initiative and may mentally check out, even if they’re still showing up.

This mentality can quickly rub off on others, and before you know it, you have a culture based on a ‘bare minimum’ mentality that trickles throughout the business. The result? Managers get caught in a loop navigating HR issues instead of strategic work, productivity slows, people make mistakes more frequently, and customer complaints start to rise.

If you don’t adapt quickly, you may start to see:

• Top performers leaving sooner than you’d hope
• Hiring managers struggling to attract quality talent
• Increased spend on stop-gap solutions like temp staff
• Missed insights from front-line staff that could improve your product/service
• Managers miss compliance risks due to being bogged down in HR

If any of this sounds familiar, chances are your perks need attention. Let’s take a look at how you can course-correct before it’s too late.

1. Ask for feedback from your team

The best place to start is by asking your employees what they love about working for you beyond the odd freebie. Whether it’s your approach to career development, a flexible working policy or target-based incentives, the perks your existing team loves should form the foundation of your employee value proposition (EVP).

From there, it’s a matter of ensuring your EVP is clearly articulated across your job ads, descriptions, career pages, and right throughout the hiring process. But don’t stop at the hiring stage: your EVP should be loud and clear throughout the entire employee lifecycle. That means regularly reminding your people of what attracted them to your business to begin with, whether you’re having a casual coffee catch-up or a formal performance review. Whatever your EVP looks like for your business, sharing it loudly and proudly is a great place to start.

1. Make recognition part of everyday culture

You know that warm feeling you get when a customer or client leaves a 5-star review? That’s the impact a simple thank you can have on your employees. So, our first piece of advice? Say thank you (often and publicly) when someone is doing an outstanding job.

But this shouldn’t just be your responsibility or your leaders. Everyone should have the opportunity to be recognised and be rewarded for great work by both colleagues and managers alike. Getting good feedback from a leader is great, but getting it from their peers can feel extra meaningful given how closely they work alongside them.

However you opt to encourage your team to celebrate their work, just make sure you draw attention to it both during the hiring process and beyond. Consistency is key.

1. Demonstrate clear pathways for development

When a top performer is considering joining a new workplace, they’re assessing you just as much as you are them. One thing in particular they’ll be looking for is understanding what processes you have in place to have them advance their career. Not just while they’re with you, but beyond, too.

It may be that they’re looking to move up the ranks in their next role or perhaps they’re hoping to upskill in another area. If you can show that you’ll support them to get there, you’re already miles ahead of the competition.

Nailing this part starts at the very beginning of the employee lifecycle and should continue throughout:

• State in your job ads and career pages how you support career development
• During interviews and onboarding, talk to each candidate about their career aspirations and how you might be able to help them get there.
• Make learning and career development a permanent agenda item for each of their 1:1s with their manager.
• Hold regular performance reviews

1. Provide mental health and wellbeing support

We’re all human, and sometimes, life can get on top of us. When work stressors and personal stress start to take a toll, staff need to feel supported. It may be that you offer a special type of wellness leave, free or partly funded gym memberships or counselling services, or something in between. Whatever you choose, just make sure your staff are aware of how they can access it and where they can go for more support.

Tip: Establishing an EAP service is a strong way to demonstrate support for your team. We partner with EAP provider, Clearhead, so that your people can access counselling and support when they need it most.

1. Get the basics right: pay, leave, and HR admin

Strong workplace culture isn’t just about motivating staff with recognition and rewards. It’s also about removing friction from your employees’ day-to-day lives. When daily tasks and HR processes are slow, unclear or unhelpful, staff can quickly start to feel unsupported.

Nothing breaks trust faster than payroll problems. Staff should be able to access payslips and tax details without having to chase someone down, and they should feel confident that they’ll be paid on time, every time.

From submitting leave and reviewing policies to completing timesheets and beyond, employees should be able to manage their own employment paperwork when it suits them, whether that’s from their laptop or phone.

1. Don’t stop at perks. Build a culture they’ll stay for

This isn’t about ditching what makes your business feel personal, local or human. It’s about building the depth that makes people want to stay.

Depth comes from investing in the tools you need to be able to recognise good work, support your team’s career development, and make working for you feel easy.

That’s where our Employment Operating System comes in. Whether it’s recognising great work, supporting career development, simplifying onboarding, streamlining leave and payroll, or delivering user-friendly learning, it’s all built in and ready for businesses like yours.

Because when you get the foundations right, the perks actually mean something and the right people will want to be part of it.

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