Employee benefits for professional services businesses

Professional services can cover a wide variety of professions, from financial services, management consultancy, and law to architecture, engineering, and technology. They all demand highly skilled employees, often educated to degree level, who can perform well in client-facing roles. Your employee benefits can help you attract job seekers in a competitive market.

A high-quality benefits package should recognise the challenges that come with your work and the significant well-being risks it entails. It's also worth considering the impact of the shift towards hybrid and remote working. While these can play a key role in a competitive benefits package, they can also create their own well-being challenges.

We've mentioned the challenges professional services staff face, so let's consider them in more detail. Tailoring your employee benefits to create a bespoke package which addresses these pressures ensures your employees feel supported, boosting morale, increasing engagement, and giving you a more productive workforce.

We'll start by looking at the pressures your employees likely face, then consider how your employee benefits package can best support them.

Long hours

Providing your clients with a professional service can mean long hours or being available outside standard office hours. This can create a company culture where employees feel pressured to be available 24/7. While working longer hours may be necessary to meet a vital deadline or collaborate with clients overseas, balance is vital. Regularly working late and skipping breaks can affect employees' concentration, focus, and productivity. It can also cause or exacerbate mental health issues and lead to burnout. These risks apply to senior staff with managerial responsibilities and more junior employees with professional development goals.

Employee benefits can show your commitment to supporting employee well-being, but it's also worth considering whether your company culture sends the same message. Providing benefits that support well-being and a positive work-life balance is unlikely to have an impact if your managers regularly work long hours and expect their teams to do the same.

Supporting clients

Your staff likely work on projects that could significantly impact their clients' lives. Legal and financial advice can influence the outcome of a court case, their lifestyle post-divorce or whether they're able to retire as planned. Your team could also influence major business decisions with wide-ranging effects. As a result, they may worry whether they've recommended the right approach, or absorb some of their clients' stress.

They may ultimately take on a role closer to that of a counsellor. Stress awareness training is useful, but the impact of managing high-stress situations often needs greater support. Creating outlets to help them relieve stress or decompress after a challenging project can help.

Regulatory and compliance issues

Legal and financial advice is highly regulated to protect clients and uphold professional standards. While many professionals experience stress leading up to a deadline, which dissipates once the work is complete, solicitors, accountants, and financial advisers must remain constantly mindful of their regulatory and compliance obligations. Your company may already have systems in place to ensure compliance is a shared responsibility. However, it's worth considering the overall impact. A senior partner may accept that the pressure of dealing with compliance issues is part of the territory. However, a younger employee who reports a problem may feel stressed after reporting a problem.

Sedentary work

Some services involve site visits and frequent travel, but for many professionals, their work involves spending long hours at a desk. Sedentary, desk-based work carries an increased risk of many physical health issues. Employees can develop musculoskeletal problems due to poor posture and heart, lung, and circulatory conditions resulting from a lack of regular physical activity. These can increase the risk of more serious conditions, like diabetes, obesity or cancer.

An active commute or natural breaks for meetings or discussions with colleagues can help to reduce the impact. However, hybrid and remote work can reduce opportunities for movement throughout the day, increasing the risk for staff who work from home.

Isolation for remote workers

Remote workers may have switched from office-based work to working from home to improve their work-life balance. However, in some cases, it can lead to increased isolation. Some staff will have requested home working to help them manage a mental health condition, for example, by avoiding a stressful commute during peak time, or noise from their colleagues. However, working alone can cause further problems due to a lack of social interaction, particularly if an employee lives alone. They may also find that the line between their work and personal commitments blurs, leading them to work extended hours and experience increased stress regularly.

Career progression

Your employees will likely prioritise their career development and seek managerial roles or partnership if that's available within your business. There may be significant competition for these roles, creating pressure for employees to perform well and demonstrate their dedication by meeting financial targets or working long hours. The quest for professional development and promotion can itself create stress and will disproportionately affect younger or more junior staff.

Creating a workplace culture that rewards employees who work hard while also prioritising their well-being can help relieve pressure.

Financial stress

Financial stress can affect employees at all levels of the business. Staff in junior or trainee roles may lack job security and receive relatively low pay compared to their more senior colleagues. This may mean they're struggling to make ends meet due to rising costs. When combined with worries about career progression, long hours and heavy workloads, financial pressure can cause additional stress.

Equally, senior staff with greater financial and personal commitments may have other people relying on their income and worry about what will happen if they become ill and can't work.

Recognising that financial stress can take many forms helps you design an employee benefits package that offers various sources of support.

Business travel

Some roles require frequent travel and time spent working away from home. This could include travel across the country to represent clients in court, visiting clients on-site to advise on projects or audit their accounts. This can make it challenging for employees to create or maintain a routine and cause difficulties in their personal relationships. A lack of routine can make it difficult to engage in regular physical activity. Frequent travel with hotel stays can also impact their access to healthy food.

Regular business travellers may also experience loneliness and isolation similar to that of remote workers.

Your benefits package helps you support your employees and their well-being. Many professional services employees value autonomy and are highly self-motivated, so providing various options enables them to choose for themselves.

Benefits that support physical health

Sedentary, desk-based work can lead to significant health concerns, including increased risk of heart disease, stroke or obesity. Your office environment plays a role, and it’s worth considering how standing desks and ergonomic equipment can help reduce risks.

Here are a few employee benefits and workplace initiatives that can support good health and increased activity.

Lunchtime education and activity sessions

When working in a high-pressure, office-based environment, there's a risk that your employees will spend long hours sitting at their desks without taking proper breaks. You can help them break the habit by introducing lunchtime activity sessions such as walking groups, yoga, Pilates or other exercise classes run by third-party providers. These can also provide mental health support by promoting social interaction.

You can supplement these with well-being education that explains the benefits of a healthy lifestyle, and give staff autonomy to create their own versions. Taking some sessions online makes them accessible to remote or travelling workers, and you can include some designed for their needs, such as finding nutritious food while travelling or building activity into your day when working at home.

Discounted gym memberships

Discounted gym memberships give staff access to a range of facilities, including a gym, swimming pool and activity classes. Many gyms offer corporate memberships, and private health insurance provides access to discounted memberships through their reward programmes. Some give members the option to choose from various gym memberships, so they can select one near their home or office, or one that has their preferred classes and facilities.

It's a good idea to consult your team to discover their preferred approach.

Health insurance with well-being rewards

We've mentioned that many private medical insurance providers offer discounted gym memberships with their member reward programmes. However, these schemes typically offer a range of perks and discounts on well-being products and services. These typically include discounts on health assessments, activity-tracking technology, and healthy food. Most business health insurance plans cover employee health assessments and support the development of a healthy lifestyle. You'll also benefit from anonymised data to help you monitor well-being trends and introduce initiatives to give you a healthy workforce.

Some providers reward employees who develop healthy habits with enhanced rewards, such as discounts on days out or hotel stays.

Cycle to work schemes

Cycle to work schemes let employees buy a bicycle and pay for it via salary sacrifice. You can offer it as a voluntary benefit so staff can opt in if it suits their circumstances. Encouraging staff to cycle to work promotes active commuting.

Salary sacrifice schemes let staff select benefits and save money by paying for them from their gross salary. You can use salary sacrifice schemes for employee benefits, such as savings on childcare costs or the purchase of an electric or hybrid vehicle. Because payments are deducted from their pre-tax salary, employees pay less income tax and National Insurance. However, they must take financial advice, as joining salary sacrifice schemes can affect their ability to borrow or get a mortgage.

Mental health support

Working in a professional services role can be stressful, with high-stakes outcomes and demanding clients. Long hours can also make it challenging for employees to create a positive work-life balance. Creating a workplace culture that normalises discussions about mental well-being is a good start. Your employee benefits package can also support good mental health.

Private health insurance with enhanced mental health cover

Including private medical insurance in your employee benefits package gives your team quick access to treatment for any condition covered by the policy. As we've discussed, professional services staff can face increased stress, making access to good-quality support and treatment a priority. Most health insurance policies include 8-10 counselling or talking therapy sessions as part of their core coverage. Staff can often self-refer to these services, giving them fast access to care without seeing a GP first. Many providers offer treatment online, making it accessible to everyone, whether they're office-based, working at home or from a hotel room. Providers also offer mental health resources that empower employees to care for their own well-being.

It's also worth considering enhancing your coverage to include more counselling sessions and a wider range of treatments, including in-patient and out-patient psychiatric care.

Employee Assistance Programmes

Employee Assistance Programmes (EAPs) provide 8-10 counselling sessions, plus telephone helplines offering general guidance on financial and legal concerns, with signposting to other sources of support if needed. Most business health insurance policies offer an EAP as part of core coverage or an optional extra. There are also standalone EAPs from other providers.

An EAP is a confidential, third-party service, meaning your staff can discuss their mental well-being or any financial or legal concerns without worrying about stigma or the impact on their future career.

A well-being allowance

Your employees are highly skilled professionals who value autonomy and seek employee benefits that support this. Some benefits, such as medical insurance, let them access services based on need or their own preferences. You can take this further by adding a well-being allowance to your employee benefits package.

Well-being allowances give each employee a budget to spend on activities that support their well-being. They might choose hypnotherapy, gym membership or regular exercise classes, a mindfulness app, or spend their allowance on a hobby that helps them decompress at the end of a busy day. Offering an allowance recognises that every employee is different and shows that you trust them to make good decisions about their health.

Generous annual leave

Sometimes there's no substitute for a complete break from work. Employee benefits such as a generous annual leave allowance or the ability to take mental health days let them step away completely, rest, and spend time with their loved ones.

These workplace benefits will only be effective if your culture supports taking breaks. Encourage managers to lead by example and take time off. It's also worth sending regular reminders about the importance of proper breaks, particularly if staff aren't in the habit of using their full annual leave allowance.

Flexible working

Flexible working can help workers reduce stress and increase autonomy over their workload. You can introduce flexible working hours, location, or a combination of the two. Flexible working is useful for staff juggling work and personal commitments, but it can also increase focus and concentration on key tasks.

For example, an employee may be working on a complex legal case and must concentrate on analysing evidence or drafting documents. Working at home can give them quiet time to focus without distractions such as client calls or colleague questions. It helps them to maintain a high standard of work and reduce their stress levels.

Support for remote workers

Flexible working can help employees balance their work and personal lives, but it can lead to isolation for some. You can support remote workers using some of the benefits we’ve already discussed. Still, a robust approach is often less about specific benefits and more about creating an inclusive company culture.

Team social events and away days

Team social events and regular away days remind remote workers that they're part of a team and promote strong workplace relationships, which can continue even when employees are working in different places and communicating via email or Zoom. Staff working in the same office have opportunities for informal social interaction which aren't available to remote workers, meaning you must invest in creating them.

When designing away days or social events, ensure they're inclusive. Events outside working hours may not suit those with caring commitments, and some activities or venues may be inaccessible to staff with disabilities.

Structured check-ins

As we've mentioned, flexible working is a valuable addition to your employee benefits, but it also needs careful management and policies that support employee well-being. Regular online meetings support collaboration and team cohesion. For example, you might introduce a daily check-in that allows staff to raise issues and arrange follow-up conversations with colleagues that can help them find a solution.

It's also a good idea to arrange regular one-to-one conversations between managers and staff. These can discuss progress but also allow managers to identify any well-being concerns and offer support.

Health insurance with digital well-being services

Every health insurer provides digital well-being services that your employees can access online or via an app. A virtual GP service provides 24/7 access to GP appointments online or by telephone so that staff can get medical advice at a convenient time, even in the middle of the night.

Health insurers also provide online portals and apps that let you check your coverage, make a claim, or access treatment at any time. Other digital tools include mindfulness and meditation apps, online smoking cessation courses, and health and well-being articles. These let every employee, including remote workers, access support and information when needed.

Well-being allowances

We've already discussed well-being allowances that give staff a personal allowance to spend on well-being activities of their choice. These are particularly beneficial to remote workers as they give them the flexibility to choose activities close to home or to seek those that provide social interaction.

Financial security

Financial concerns can affect employees at all levels of your business. Trainees and junior staff who are just starting out may find it challenging to manage their money. Senior staff may earn more, but feel pressure to maintain their financial contributions to their household and worry about how an illness could impact their lifestyle. Employee benefits can provide a valuable financial safety net.

Enhanced sick pay

If a high-earning professional becomes seriously ill or sustains an injury, they may face a lengthy absence from work. They've likely invested in a lifestyle that would quickly become unaffordable should their income fall during their absence. Equally, junior staff with lower wages may struggle to pay the bills, particularly if they're already finding it hard to make ends meet. Those with dependants will worry about the impact on their families. Statutory sick pay (SSP) pays £125.25 per week for up to 28 weeks, meaning even the lowest-paid staff will quickly feel the financial impact.

Including income protection insurance in your employee benefits lets you provide enhanced sick pay for up to 2 years. Employees receive a percentage of their salary during their absence, helping them pay bills, support loved ones, and maintain their lifestyle. Some professional service employees exhibit presenteeism, returning to work before they've fully recovered to avoid financial loss. Investing in employee benefits that offer a financial safety net can help prevent this.

Death in service benefits

Death in service benefits pay a lump sum to an employee's family if they die during the course of their employment. Your employees may have taken on significant financial commitments, such as a mortgage or car loans. The lump-sum payment can help cover these costs, paying off the mortgage or loans to reduce their loved ones' regular outgoings. It can also provide support in the future. For example, they may have planned to help pay their children's university fees or provide a deposit for their first home.

Most employers include group life insurance in their employee benefits. However, if your business has equity partners or high-net-worth directors, it can also be worth considering relevant life insurance. Speak to your financial advisers and an insurance broker to explore your options.

Financial well-being support

Employee benefits that help staff save money or manage their finances well can be as valuable as a higher salary or regular bonuses. We've mentioned salary sacrifice schemes that enable tax-efficient savings. However, other forms of financial well-being support are worth considering alongside your employee benefits.

Access to financial advice helps staff make informed decisions about savings, investments and pension schemes. Your pension scheme likely includes fees for advice, so ensure your employees have access to this, either by inviting the adviser to your office or offering bookable online appointments. You can also provide information on local financial advisers with guidance on choosing a regulated provider.

Finally, use your network to invite other professionals to run training sessions. For example, if you work in employment law, you could offer training on current legislation and how it impacts employees, in exchange for sessions on pensions, salary sacrifice schemes or financial planning.

Discount and reward schemes

We've discussed the reward schemes available with health insurance, focusing on the well-being benefits they provide. However, these schemes offer a wide range of benefits that can help your team get more enjoyment out of their lives and save money on items they already buy, such as takeaway coffee, cinema tickets, or groceries. They can also earn treats, such as spa days, to help them decompress and relax. These can help younger employees on a tight budget make their money go further.

Speaking to an insurance broker will help you understand how health insurers' reward programmes work. However, there are also standalone providers offering reward programmes designed for employee benefits packages.

Health cover overseas

If your employees regularly travel overseas on business, travel insurance that covers lost luggage, equipment and travel cancellations is essential. It can also provide emergency medical treatment abroad and cover repatriation costs if necessary.

However, regular foreign travel can impact an employee's ability to arrange routine healthcare, particularly if their work involves long periods away from the UK. In those circumstances, consider providing international health insurance as one of their employee benefits. It provides access to private healthcare abroad, with the treatments offered varying depending on your chosen policy. Most policies also offer 24/7 telephone helplines and digital services so employees can get advice from an English-speaking operator wherever they are in the world.

As a professional services business, you invest in attracting and retaining talented staff. Recognising the challenges your employees face and providing employee benefits that support them demonstrates your commitment to their well-being. At Globacare, we help you find insurance policies that underpin your employee benefits and fit with your needs and budget. Contact us today for tailored advice.