The benefits provided by employers have, at least in recent years, represented an important part of the overall salary package offered, and often make a difference for candidates who are increasingly attentive to the types of benefits they could access when deciding to make a career change.

The current pandemic has radically altered the habits and working conditions of both companies and employees alike, leading to a predominance of remote work or, in some cases, the implementation of flexible schedules with varying start and end times. Each of us has wondered at least once whether, in this new context, we will still have access to company cars, meal vouchers, or any other benefits we have grown accustomed to.

In the following sections, we present a study on the most common types of benefits and their fluctuations before and after the pandemic, based on data from over 250 partner companies in our portfolio.

Meal Vouchers:

This is one of the most commonly used types of benefits. According to payroll data processed by Smartree, approximately 50% of employees receive meal vouchers from their employers. Even at the beginning of the pandemic, when office work shifted predominantly to remote work, some employees wondered whether they would still receive meal vouchers in the new context. However, meal vouchers are not a benefit associated with physical presence in the office but with a working day. Therefore, companies that offered this benefit last year did not eliminate it, and the value of meal vouchers provided increased by 9% this year. However, some companies opted to provide bonuses instead of vouchers. The increase is also due to the rise in the maximum nominal value of meal vouchers to 20 lei per working day, a change that came into effect on April 1.

Health & Insurance:

The health and insurance benefits category includes private medical subscriptions, insurance, and gym memberships. Although the first two benefits may seem very similar, there are significant differences between them. Medical subscriptions provide limited access to a single medical provider and do not cover hospitalization or major surgical procedures, while one of the main advantages of private health insurance is that it offers access to a wide range of medical services from a large number of providers, including international ones, covering all important medical procedures.

Regarding medical subscriptions and insurance, whether life, social, or health insurance, their value has increased by nearly 40%. This is due to certain companies that did not offer these benefits in the past opting to take out private health or life insurance, as well as the diversification and increase in the value of the packages offered, including the possibility of testing on demand for the detection of the SARS-CoV-2 virus. There are also employers who offer medical subscriptions or insurance that include family members, although these cases are limited.

In terms of gym memberships, the situation is different. Very few companies offer this type of benefit to employees, somewhere below 10% in relation to the companies analyzed. These are primarily companies from the financial services, BPO, IT and software infrastructure, or telecommunications sectors. The value of memberships supported by companies has decreased by over 50% due to the closure of gyms and the freezing of related subscriptions. However, there were employers who continued to pay for these subscriptions during the state of emergency for various online activities and training sessions, but at a much lower value than initially.

Bonuses:

Bonuses can be viewed as an addition to salaries, and companies have a very varied approach to implementing these benefits. From company to company, these monetary amounts can be awarded in various ways, either as fixed sums of money or occasionally, for example, during holidays, employee birthdays, or as a 13th salary. Bonuses can also be tied to individual or company performance, such as sales bonuses. Additionally, some companies offer employees specific bonuses for knowledge of multiple foreign languages, for recommending company jobs, for involvement, loyalty, specific competencies, or productivity. We can also include in this category bonuses provided in the form of allowances or transportation reimbursements.

The value of these bonuses has decreased by approximately 15% this year, as many projects and investments planned for this year have been postponed, including budgets allocated for employee rewards.

In-kind Benefits:

In addition to bonuses, another type of benefit practiced by companies is related to goods or services covered by the employer that employees can use at any time to meet their personal needs. This category may include products such as food, office fruits, clothing, company cars, mobile phones and their related subscriptions, all used for personal purposes.

Similar to bonuses, the value of these benefits has decreased by 20% this year.

Assistance for Special Events:

Although this category includes assistance from the company for various events, it can be considered a benefit because it is not legally required. This assistance is more often offered by employers as part of their internal regulations or as a result of negotiations in collective labor contracts.

The value of these aids, which consisted of sums awarded to employees for events such as births, marriages, retirements, or deaths, has decreased by 8% during this period compared to last year.

Vacation or Well-being Activity Bonuses:

Even though vacation vouchers were initially introduced to support Romanian tourism and are mainly offered by public sector institutions to their employees, approximately 10% of the companies analyzed include these types of benefits in their policies, either in the form of vouchers or vacation bonuses. There are also a few companies from the oil and gas, online retail, software, or financial services sectors that offer cultural tickets as well.

The value of these benefits has seen a significant decrease during the current period, approximately 36% compared to the previous year, due to the reduction in vacation days taken by employees as a result of uncertainties and travel warnings in the pandemic context.

Expat Bonuses, Relocation Costs, Rent, and Utilities:

This type of bonus awarded to expats and other employees in connection with relocation and monthly reimbursement of rent or utility expenses has decreased by 25% during the analyzed period, as employees have worked more from home this year. Relocation projects have been limited to urgent, critical situations only.