How to offer audiobooks as an HR Perk

Businesses need to be creative and innovative to improve operations. Introducing the right HR perks can be the difference between an effective business and one that lags behind competitors, has high turnover rates, and struggles to keep its employees happy. Audiobooks can be the most robust perks any HR department can offer. This article explains how you can introduce audiobooks into your organization and use them for mutual benefit.

What are HR perks?

Employee perks are non-wage benefits beyond salary and health insurance, dental, retirement, vision, and other benefits. Many people also call them fringe benefits. Perks are excellent for rewarding employees beyond the standard benefits and salary. Most businesses combine environmental, purchasable, and programmatic perks. Purchasable perks include lunches, fitness passes, loan forgiveness, pet insurance, books, etc. Programmatic perks refer to policy-driven perks for working at a specific company, like four-day workweeks, pet-friendly offices, or remote work opportunities. Environmental perks include the overall space, how you set up meditation rooms, etc. Perks aren’t:

• Dental, health care, and vision packages
• Company hygiene factors like values, vision, mission, etc.
• Company culture

Business owners should differentiate perks from work benefits. Business benefits are something every employee needs. A perk can be something they want. A well-balanced perk vs. benefit offering makes the best impact on employees and does wonders for a robust company culture. Audiobooks can be a great perk option for businesses that struggle to keep their employees engaged and attracted to the company.

How audiobooks improve employee quality of life

Audiobooks are becoming more popular as a form of storytelling that can capture attention. There are three significant benefits of audiobooks that help improve the quality of life of employees across industries.

Mental health benefits

A modern-day employee has stress coming from all sides. This often creates negative feelings that transfer to the workplace or even originate in the office. Audiobooks serve as a source of relaxation from stressful thoughts and environments. In fact, audiobooks can improve our mood and have self-soothing effects. This is especially true when employees need to take time off-screen. They can listen to their favorite content while running on a treadmill, preparing dinner, or walking the dog.

Greater accessibility

Audiobooks are excellent content sources for people with visual impairments. Anyone who has difficulty seeing can process audio information to boost their productivity. It’s no wonder why numerous schools for students with disabilities promote audiobooks as basic content for learning.

Excellent for fine-tuning skills

Audiobooks are available in just about any genre you can imagine. Employees and team members can benefit from this variety to work on their skills and become better at what they do. Thanks to audiobook subscriptions, they have unlimited access to educational content that can make them more productive. Speechify is an excellent example of how such a subscription can help. Specially created to cultivate a learning culture in businesses, Speechify has tons of free audiobooks you can use as an employee benefit. The company also offers the only business audiobook subscription (not even Amazon’s Audible does this anymore) tailored to businesses from all industries.

Why employee perks matter

Offering perks to employees comes with various benefits, including:

• Boosting employee productivity and satisfaction
• Increasing employee engagement
• Attracting and retaining high-performing workers
• Offering a relatively affordable way to support workers beyond wages
• Strengthening and reinforcing the purpose, culture, and values of a company

As mentioned earlier, perks are primarily about what employees want. When your employee’s needs are fulfilled, at least to a satisfactory level, they can be more productive, enthusiastic, and active. Unfortunately, offering a good paycheck isn’t a good enough reason for an employee to stay at a company and be engaged in their job. The culture of resignations and job-hopping requires business owners to be more creative in how they can keep employees happy - especially high-performing members of the team. For these and many other reasons, introducing perks to your HR department is necessary. Gym memberships, good cell phone deals, LinkedIn Premium or Netflix subscriptions, corporate discounts, access to podcasts, and promo codes are only some examples of perks that thousands of companies implement, especially following the pandemic.

Bring a smile to your employee’s faces with Speechify

Speechify is an audiobook service with more than 70,000 titles and growing. This platform is an ideal solution for businesses that wish to implement audiobooks as HR perks. Speechify is the only business audiobook subscription platform on the web, making it an excellent long-term investment to help keep employees engaged. Various New York Times bestseller titles and an abundance of well-being and professional development books can help business owners offer something suitable for everyone. Speechify is available as an iOS and Android app where employees can enjoy their favorite content and receive regular upgrades. Complete control over the playback speed, the ability to pick from various narrators, and offline listening are only some benefits of using Speechify. Learn more details about how Speechify’s Audiobooks for Businesses can help your company and employees thrive when offered as an HR perk.

FAQ

What is the average length of an audiobook?

Audiobooks are usually long pieces of content. On average, they last for 10 hours. An average book with 100,000 words translates to around 11 hours of audiobook content.

What is the difference between an audiobook and a book on tape?

Books on tape are book recordings written on a special physical tape and inserted into a tape recorder. These tapes used to be popular forty or fifty years ago. On the other hand, Audiobooks are digital versions of books recorded and available online. Anyone with internet access can listen to audiobooks.

What are the best audiobook titles for business employees?

The 4 Disciplines of Execution, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, Atomic Habits, and The 80/20 Principle are some of the most popular titles for business employees.

Can audiobooks be useful in the workplace?

Yes, audiobooks can be helpful in all workplaces due to their vast range of topics and genres. They boost employee engagement, assist with retention, and offer a great work-life balance. Learn more about Audiobooks for Business at Speechify.