ABSTRACT

While carrying considerable potential costs when delivered in financial equivalent form, covering a considerable range of items on offer extending to non-financial ‘perks’, and having questionable traction among some employees as to experienced value, ‘fringe’ benefits have had something of a ‘Cinderella’ character within reward management debates. Informed by CIPD research evidence, as well as some international comparisons, questions around securing value for money from employee benefit provision are discussed. Making the case for going beyond cash-based reward, with the clear proviso that in practice such investments need to be better grounded in theoretically robust principles and evidence-based management decision-taking.