Employee Perks That Cost More Than an AED
Your employees are at the heart of your business and they each play a vital role in your commercial success. Because of this, organisations invest a lot of money into employee perks that make the business a nice place to work, and this keeps those employee-satisfaction levels high.
After all, satisfied employees are productive employees, and their wellbeing should be a key focus for any business owner.
One thing that often gets overlooked is the physical health of employees. Some businesses offer an on-site gym or discounted membership to local fitness centres, but that doesn’t prepare you in the case of a potentially fatal cardiac arrest. Sudden cardiac arrest (SCA) can happen to anyone at any time, regardless of diet or their level of physical fitness, with 30,000 out-of-hospital cardiac arrests happening in the UK each year.
Our defibs vary in price and functionality, but our most affordable unit is the HeartSine Samaritan, which you can buy for £834 including VAT. We’ve taken a look at a few different employee perks – some ongoing, some one-off payments – and worked out how much they cost in comparison to the Samaritan. You never know, sacrificing a perk for a couple of months could free up enough cash for you to invest in a piece of lifesaving equipment.
Free Tea and Coffee
Caffeinated drinks are the cornerstone of any busy office environment. They pick us up in the morning and keep us going after lunch, they make us more productive, and they make us equally as tired later on. That being said, free tea and coffee is an element of office life that is expected to be provided for employees. It’s a sort of unwritten agreement by which you keep your staff refreshed and they keep working hard.
It’s common for businesses to offer this perk, but it isn’t essential. In fact, some businesses don’t offer it at all. This is probably because HR experts have worked out that free tea and coffee can cost an average of £300 per person, per year. That works out at £25 per person, per month, and if you’re a small-to-medium-sized organisation, with 10 members of staff, for example, you could save up enough to buy a HeartSine defib in just over three months.
Catered Lunches
This perk isn’t as common in smaller businesses, but larger corporations will often supply their staff with catered lunches: some will supply them with daily food and others will supply them with a complimentary lunch once or twice per month. Either way, the costs average out at £7-£15 per person, per lunch, and despite the fact that this offering has great motivational benefits for your staff, it can add up.
To use the small-to-medium-business example from the previous section, if you had 10 employees who all enjoy a catered lunch every day, you spend between £70-£150 on food each afternoon. Add up the costs and you could have enough for a HeartSine in just under two weeks, or just over one year if you pay for monthly lunches.
Team-Building Days
These are activities that are designed to bring your team closer together, give them an understanding of each other, and make them more productive on the whole.
There’s been a lot of speculation as to whether team-building days are actually any use in achieving these three things. Employees will almost always say that they find value in them, because these activities offer a break from their usual day-to-day tasks, but whether they actually create stronger teams is up for debate.
These days don’t come cheap, either, with providers recommending that you budget for £150 per person, including catering. This means that a day out for your 10 members of staff would cost at least £1,500. If you’ve already got an established team, then ploughing funding into their teamwork skills isn’t necessary. For this amount, you could buy the HeartSine and have change left over for different employee perks.
A Small Investment Can Save A Life
When you consider the amount that you will pay for tea, coffee, and team-building days, a defibrillator is a small investment to give your employees the knowledge that they will be safe in the event of SCA striking one of them. For more information about who is at risk of cardiac arrest, take a look at our blog, and if you think the HeartSine is a good fit for your business, you can enquire here.
defibshop are committed to equipping everyone with the skills and knowledge to save a life. Speak to one of our Product Specialists on 0161 776 7422 or fill out our Contact Form.
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