Working culture changes over time and in recent years there has been an increased focus on employee wellness and emotional salary.

While people are always looking to be well paid, professionals have increasingly begun to look for jobs that help them to thrive and give them time to dedicate to their personal passions.

Emotional salary refers to those things that a company may offer to make team members feel valued or gaurantee their wellbeing.  

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That will often involve flexibility, development opportunities, or a range of other non-monetary benefits.

Below, some deeper insight into the concept is provided, before five good examples of emotional salary are highlighted.

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What does emotional salary consist of? 

While ‘salary’ refers solely to remuneration, ’emotional salary’ pertains to non-cash perks that make life more comfortable for professionals.

Emotional salary is essentially intended as an add-on to a standard pay package, designed to keep people happier and make the company a more attractive place to work, and therfore better able to keep hold of talent.

It is something that professionals are increasingly tuned into, with many people who chose to switch jobs during the so-called ‘Great Resignation’ of recent years reporting that they took a pay cut in order to work under more agreeable conditions.

Offering an enticing emotional salary means understanding the needs of the employees, because generational or cultural factors could make one or another type of benefit particularly attractive. The offer of fully remote work, for example, has been cited as a major factor in some companies increasing diversity in their workforces, because it is particularly atractive to some minority groups.

5 good examples of emotional salary

For anyone looking for a role that offers good non-financial benefits, or for companies seeking to make themselves more attractive to prospective candidates, the following five examples of emotional salary are worth considering:

1) Timetable flexibility 

Choosing your own working hours is a fantastic business initiative. This is something that keeps team motivation high and reconciles the needs of all ages. However, these are not arbitrarily chosen hours, but instead staggered times for entering and leaving work.  

People must be free to decide the schedules that best suit their peak productivity as there are morning people who prefer to work very early and there are night owls who prefer to start late and finish late. Giving each person their favourite schedule means that they perform better, have greater mental clarity, and are in a better mood. This all adds up to an impressive emotional salary. 

Another important part of time flexibility is the possibility of working from home when necessary, even if the company has adopted the hybrid system. This helps, for example, parents who have an unexpected childcare emergency. Not being able to make it to the office is one fewer cause for anxiety because they know that it is possible to do their workday from the comfort of home. 

2) Remote working

This option is linked to the previous point. Remote working is one of the main sources of satisfaction for employees. Offering remote working days allows them to use enjoy time usually spent commuting doing things they enjoy, such as going to the gym, spending time with children or pets, or getting more sleep in. 

Not only is there less time wasted on a commute, but there’s also the benefit of working in a more relaxed space. Not everyone enjoys working in offices and some people simply work better from the comfort of their own home. After the pandemic changed people’s attitudes towards going into a physical office every day, some people simply don’t want to return to the old ways. 

This benefit has a positive impact on all employees because it is completely linked to balance. In the past, many people lived to work, but millennials and generation Z have a different approach and prefer dedicating time to personal development and family contact. This is why the home office is so highly valued as an emotional salary benefit.

3) Ongoing training  

This emotional salary benefit is good for the company and the employees, as both the individual and the group need more skills. 

Personal development maintains high motivation among employees and leads them to continue meeting professional goals as part of their employee lifecycle. When the company supports you to achieve this goal, you’re more likely to stay loyal.  

One way to do this is by offering refresher courses to each department. For example, if it is marketing, you can give the team a course on the latest trends in the likes of B2B digital marketing. This way, you are creating a team with more knowledge and at the same time giving each individual more strings to their bow for future jobs.   

There is also the possibility of supporting personal goals by offering corporate language classes or giving access credits to certain education platforms. These might not even be connected to the core business of the company, but they may interest the workers for other reasons. That in turn makes them happier and more productive. 

4) Leisure spaces 

Much emphasis has been placed on the importance of the design of the work environment, and part of that is creating leisure spaces. The big trend in companies is to designate a different space on each floor where employees can disconnect for a few moments from their desks, have a cup of coffee, socialize with colleagues, and recharge energy to continue with the day’s work. 

This space is a great motivator, because it not only improves the aesthetics of the office, but also the mental health and emotional salary of employees. We’ve always talked about the dangers of sedentary living, so these corners offer a great value: a chance to disconnect and walk away from the workstation. 

Just because a worker is not at their desk does not mean they are not getting anything done. Decentralised leisure places allow for valuable cross-department idea pollination as well as informal work chats. Some of this may be idle gossip, but some of it will be sharing perspectives and understanding the realities of other departments on a personal level. That’s key to good inter-department communication. 

5) Social benefits 

Social benefits are another form of compensation within a financial package that is highly valued. Working with legal benefits is a requirement of legal operation but upgrading that package will make workers feel more secure in their job. Employees won’t look elsewhere if they’re happy with the benefits in their financial and emotional salary.

Examples of these benefits include full medical insurance, restaurant or gas vouchers, gym memberships, birthday days off, gift cards with experiences, personal days, more generous vacations, performance bonuses, and group travel.  

The best companies to work for place special emphasis on the happiness of their employees. This results in the company having a good reputation as a fair employer, boosts employee retention and in turn puts less pressure on the recruitment team.

‍Understanding emotional salary when hiring abroad 

For anyone planning on hiring abroad, understanding what sort of benefits would constitute an attractive emotional salary might be challenging. Because, while the likes of flexible schedules and remote working are well known, there might be some perks popular with local professionals that anyone unfamiliar with the market might not think of.

Those could include benefits that are not required by law, but are widely expected — such as a particular day of the year commonly being given as a day off work when it is not an official public holiday.

The difficulties involved in understanding an unfamiliar professional culture, as well as the advantage of knowing you will be in full compliance with all local employment laws, are just two reasons why my companies seek to hire overseas staff via an employer of record (EOR).

Because an EOR hires overseas professionals on behalf of a client, taking care of the payroll and administration of the people being hired, as well as helping to manage the likes of statutory leave and bonuses.

Those professionals, meanwhile, report directly to the client. Meaning that by working with an EOR, you can quickly have overseas team members in place without needing a local legal entity, or having to concern yourself with unfamiliar regulation.

Serviap Global assists clients with global EOR services

At Serviap Global, we assist clients with international PEO / EOR services in over 100 countries worldwide. We also offer global talent acquisition services to help clients find top professionals to hire directly.

Whatever kind of people you need — from a small number of executives or IT professionals to a full team to staff up a call center or manufacturing facility — we can support you.

Our family-run company started out in Mexico over 12 years ago, before expanding throughout Latin America and growing into Africa, Asia, and Europe.

Contact us today to find out more.

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