Perks at Work: Are Yours Actually Working?

A perk, in its simplest form, is anything an employer offers beyond contractual pay and statutory entitlements. Cinema tickets at a reduced price. Discounts at the supermarket. A gym subsidy. Access to savings on family days out. Most UK organisations have some version of this list. The uncomfortable truth, confirmed by research published in 2026, is that a significant proportion of employees have never heard of theirs.

HR Magazine, citing industry research this year, found that only 39% of businesses feel confident their employees clearly understand the benefits available to them. That is not a minor administrative oversight. It represents a situation in which employers are spending budget on perks that generate zero goodwill, zero retention benefit, and zero engagement uplift, simply because nobody told staff the programme existed.

This is the defining challenge for reward and benefits professionals right now. Not whether to offer perks at work, but whether the perks that already exist are visible, relevant, and actively promoted.

The Communication Gap Is the Real Problem

Here is a figure that should stop HR directors in their tracks: 48% of HR leaders report poor uptake of employee benefits because employees "don't seem interested" in what is on offer, according to HR Magazine's reporting on the same research. This explanation, while understandable, puts the problem in the wrong place. Employees are not disinterested in financial relief or lifestyle benefits. They are disengaged from the communication channels and portals through which those benefits are delivered.

The framing matters. When a benefits portal sends a reminder email at 8am on a Tuesday that a staff member deletes without reading, that is not employee disinterest. That is a communication failure. The distinction is important because it has very different solutions.

Perks need to be communicated as real pound-value, not HR policy. An employee who learns they could save £35 per month on their grocery shopping through their employer's deals and discounts platform is engaged. An employee who receives a link to a benefits portal in a new-starter pack and never revisits it is not going to generate return on your investment.

Why July Is Exactly the Right Moment to Audit This

Timing matters. The summer period puts genuine financial pressure on UK employees. School holiday childcare costs, family holidays, leisure spend, and the general uptick in social activity all land between July and August. Supermarket shopping discount downloads via employee benefits apps are reportedly up 10% month-on-month at present, according to data from HIVE360's Engage platform cited by the GPA. That is not coincidental. Employees are looking for ways to manage household costs, and the employers who actively promote relevant perks right now will feel the benefit in loyalty and engagement long after summer ends.

The Q3 period is also when many UK HR teams conduct their annual or biannual benefits review, ahead of autumn budget cycles and January renewal windows. An audit of your current perks programme, run during July or August, puts you in a strong position to realign spend, cut underused benefits, and double down on the ones that deliver measurable uptake.

What Employees Actually Want From Perks in 2026

The research is clear on this point. A Zest Benefits survey of 2,000 UK employees found that 21% cite high street discounts as a top desired benefit in 2026. Separate analysis from Hooray Insurance's 2026 employee benefits statistics showed retail and leisure discounts ranked as the second most-desired benefits category overall, behind pension contributions, with 28% of employees listing it in their top three.

These are not aspirational benefits. They are practical financial tools. Retail discount schemes, access to employee vouchers, and platforms that let staff save while they shop address a real problem employees face every week: the cost of living is still biting, wage growth has not kept pace for many, and any mechanism that stretches take-home pay further has tangible value.

Research from Perkbox found that 35% of UK employees want personalised rewards and benefits as cost-of-living support, and 34% specifically want discount schemes. That data suggests the appetite for practical financial perks is not a niche preference. It is a majority expectation.

For the summer period specifically, categories with particular resonance include leisure and entertainment discounts, with cinema ticket savings being consistently cited as a valued perk across multiple surveys. Cinema deals and family activity discounts serve a double purpose: they provide genuine financial relief and they signal that the employer understands what employees care about outside work.

Similarly, fitness-related perks carry seasonal weight. Gym memberships and fitness benefits see higher interest and uptake in the summer months, when employees are more motivated to exercise and when free-time patterns change. If your perks programme includes fitness access, this is the window to promote it actively.

The Strategic Deficit: Perks Without Purpose

Beyond the communication problem sits a deeper strategic issue. The CIPD's 2026 Reward Survey found that 22% of UK employers offer benefits with no defined objectives. A further 69% of UK employers do not link their benefits strategy to boosting productivity or business performance, based on the same data set. Perks are deployed, sometimes generously, but rarely with a framework for measuring what they achieve.

This matters not just for CFOs scrutinising benefits spend but for HR directors who want to make a credible strategic case for their perks programme at board level. A perk without an objective is difficult to defend when budgets are squeezed. A perk with clear uptake data, demonstrable employee satisfaction scores, and retention metrics attached to it becomes a business asset.

The CIPD's research also noted that only 15% of UK organisations have a formal financial wellbeing policy or strategy. For many employers, the perks programme is in practice the closest thing they have to a financial wellbeing offer. Positioning it explicitly as such, and communicating it as a financial support mechanism rather than a collection of discounts, can meaningfully shift employee perception and engagement.

The Retention Argument Is Stronger Than It Looks

HR directors who view perks as a soft spend area may want to revisit the retention mathematics. The average cost of replacing a UK employee is now estimated at £30,614, based on 2026 data from Going Private UK, with an average annual turnover rate of 34% across UK organisations. Against that backdrop, the cost of a well-run perks and discounts programme looks modest.

The causal link between employer generosity and retention is also better evidenced than it used to be. Research from Compt's 2026 Lifestyle Benefits Benchmark Report found that employees who feel cared for by their employer are 60% more likely to plan to stay with their organisation for the next year. That is not a marginal uplift. A 60% improvement in twelve-month retention intent, for a perks programme that costs considerably less than a pay rise, is a compelling return.

The same research found that business units with high engagement, which correlates strongly with well-communicated perks programmes, report 14% higher productivity and 78% lower absenteeism. The business case is robust. It is rarely communicated as such.

How to Run a Practical Perks Audit This Summer

For HR directors and reward leads who want to act on this, July offers a natural reset point. A structured perks audit does not require a significant time investment. The questions to answer are:

Which perks are currently available, and when were they last reviewed for relevance? If your discount platform has not been updated since 2024, or if the retail partners no longer reflect where your employees actually shop, uptake will naturally be low regardless of communication quality.

What is the current uptake rate for each perk, and how does that vary across employee segments? Low uptake in a particular division, age band, or location is actionable data. It may indicate that the perk is not relevant to that group, or that internal communications have not reached them.

How is the programme currently being communicated? Monthly newsletters, manager briefings, line manager toolkits, and digital signage all reach different employee cohorts. A single communication channel is rarely sufficient for a diverse workforce.

Are employees aware of the monetary value of the perks they have access to? A common finding from benefits audits is that employees significantly underestimate the financial value of their employer's perks package. Translating the programme into concrete savings figures, "employees who use our discount platform save an average of £X per month on their grocery shopping", produces a more compelling message than "we offer a discount programme".

Platforms like Each Person are designed to address exactly this kind of engagement and visibility challenge, providing a single, accessible hub for discounts, rewards, and recognition that employees actually use. If your current setup requires employees to navigate multiple portals or remember separate login credentials, that friction alone will suppress uptake.

The Summer Opportunity

The employer relationship with perks is at an inflection point. Budget pressures have not gone away for employees, but neither have they for employers. The organisations that come out of this period with stronger engagement scores and lower turnover will be the ones that made their perks visible, relevant, and tied to what employees actually needed in 2026.

The gap between what employers offer and what employees know about is not a fixed feature of the landscape. It is a communication and strategy problem. And communication problems, unlike salary budgets, are almost entirely within HR's control to fix.

For more on how a structured approach to employee rewards and discounts drives measurable outcomes, explore Each Person's platform or review the full glossary of benefit and reward tools available to UK employers.