There’s a conversation I seem to be having quite a bit with employers at the moment.
They want to do more for their people. They know everyday costs are still putting pressure on employees, and they’d genuinely like to help.
But then comes the obvious question:
“What else can we realistically do? We can’t just keep increasing salaries.”
And that’s fair.
Businesses have their own costs to manage. Particularly if you’ve got 100, 200 or 500 employees, even a relatively small salary increase becomes a significant annual cost very quickly.
But I think there’s another way of looking at it.
Rather than asking “How do we pay everyone more?”, maybe the question is:
How can we help the salary we’re already paying go a little bit further?
Because there are actually quite a few ways employers can do that.
And some of them are incredibly simple.
Start with what people are already spending money on
Think about your own month for a second.
You might do the weekly shop. Bring the kids to the cinema. Go for dinner. Join a gym. Buy something for the house. Book a hotel for a weekend away.
Nothing particularly unusual there.
Your employees are doing exactly the same thing.
So if you can help someone save €10 on something here, €20 there, maybe €50 somewhere else, those savings start adding up.
You’re not asking them to change how they live.
You’re helping them get more value from money they were probably going to spend anyway.
And I think that’s where employee benefits can sometimes lose their way.
We get caught up talking about how many benefits are available.
“Our employees have access to 500 benefits.”
Great.
But how many are they actually using?
I’d much rather give someone five benefits they genuinely use than 500 they don’t know exist.
That’s really the measure that matters.
It doesn't have to be something huge
I think there’s sometimes an expectation that if an employer wants to make a meaningful difference, it needs to be a big gesture.
It really doesn’t.
Say someone saves €15 on a family meal.
They get cheaper cinema tickets another weekend.
Then they save on a hotel break.
Maybe there’s a discount on something they’re buying anyway.
Individually, none of those is going to change someone’s life.
But over 12 months?
It starts to become meaningful.
More importantly, the employee can actually see the benefit.
That’s the bit I’m particularly interested in.
If we’re spending money on employee benefits, employees should actually feel the value of them.
Otherwise, what’s the point?
Then there's recognition and that doesn't always need a budget
There’s another side to this which I think is equally important.
People want to be paid fairly.
Of course they do.
But people also want to know that the work they’re doing is being noticed.
And sometimes we massively overcomplicate that.
Someone stays late to help.
Someone covers another person’s shift.
A customer sends in brilliant feedback about a member of the team.
Someone quietly helps a new starter settle in.
Someone has been with the company five years.
A team has had an absolutely manic month and somehow kept everything moving.
Those are the moments where someone should simply say:
“Thanks. We noticed.”
It doesn’t always need €50 attached to it.
In fact, I don’t think it should.
If every bit of recognition has to have a monetary reward attached, recognition gets expensive very quickly — and probably loses some of its meaning as well.
A thank you from a manager matters.
A shout-out from a colleague matters.
Having your work recognised in front of the team matters.
Celebrating someone’s anniversary matters.
The trick is making sure it actually happens.
Not once a year at the Christmas party.
Throughout the year.
Recognition and reward aren't actually the same thing
This is something I’ve probably become more convinced about the longer we’ve worked in this space.
We tend to use “reward and recognition” as one phrase.
But they’re actually two different things.
You can recognise someone every week without spending a cent.
Then there are certain moments where you might decide:
“That deserves something extra.”
That’s the reward.
And once you start separating those two things, you can build a much better programme.
Recognition can be frequent.
Rewards can be meaningful.
And your budget can go towards the moments where it actually has the most impact.
And this is where Ireland has a really interesting advantage
If you’re an Irish employer, there’s another part of this conversation that is well worth understanding.
The Small Benefit Exemption.
It’s one of those things that plenty of businesses know about, but I don’t think everyone is necessarily making the most of it.
Under the current rules, an employer can provide an employee with up to five qualifying non-cash benefits during the year, with a combined value of up to €1,500, subject to Revenue’s conditions.
For years, a lot of us probably thought about this as the Christmas voucher.
December comes around, Here’s your voucher! Happy Christmas! See you next year.
But the ability to provide up to five qualifying benefits changes that conversation.
Because now you can start thinking about rewarding people at different moments during the year rather than putting everything into December.
Maybe somebody gets recognised for a major achievement earlier in the year.
There’s a summer reward.
The company reaches an important milestone.
There’s a long-service award.
And then there’s a Christmas reward.
It doesn’t mean every employee needs to receive €1,500.
That’s really important.
It simply gives employers more flexibility in how they think about rewarding their people.
Because €1,500 sounds great — until you multiply it by 500 employees
This is where we need to be realistic.
Whenever you mention the €1,500 Small Benefit Exemption, it’s easy to make it sound like:
“Great — give everyone €1,500.”
If you’ve got 500 employees, you’ve just created a potential €750,000 reward budget.
I’m fairly sure the CFO won’t thank us for that suggestion.
That’s not the point.
Maybe your annual reward budget is €100 per employee.
Maybe it’s €250.
Maybe it’s €500.
Maybe different achievements have different levels of reward.
Every organisation is going to be different.
The opportunity is to take the money you’re already prepared to spend on your employees and make sure you’re using it in the smartest possible way.
And if you’re spending that money in Ireland anyway, it’s worth understanding whether qualifying rewards can be structured within the Small Benefit Exemption.
So what does this actually look like?
Imagine you’ve got a hotel with 150 employees.
You’ve got reception, housekeeping, food and beverage, kitchen, reservations, leisure, sales and management.
Some people are starting work when other people are going home.
Some employees might rarely see the General Manager.
And yet brilliant things are happening every day.
A guest emails to say one of the reception team couldn’t have been more helpful.
Someone in housekeeping spots an issue before it becomes a problem.
A restaurant employee helps another department through an unexpectedly busy service.
Someone reaches five years with the hotel.
The kitchen team gets fantastic feedback from an event.
Traditionally, a lot of those moments disappear.
Everyone is busy.
You move onto the next shift.
But imagine instead that the manager can recognise that person there and then.
Other employees can say well done.
The recognition is visible.
And when something really deserves it, a reward can be attached.
At the same time, those employees can be saving money on a hotel break, cinema tickets, eating out, fitness or everyday shopping.
Suddenly, we’re not really talking about a benefits portal anymore.
We’re talking about making someone’s overall experience of working for the business a little bit better.
And retail isn't really that different
Think about someone working in a store.
Head office might see the numbers.
The store manager sees what actually happened to produce those numbers.
They know who covered the shift.
Who helped the new employee.
Who dealt brilliantly with a difficult customer.
Who got mentioned in customer feedback.
Who went above and beyond when the store was under pressure.
Those moments are happening every day across Irish businesses.
The problem isn’t necessarily that companies don’t want to recognise them.
Often it’s simply that there isn’t an easy way to do it consistently.
And that’s the bit technology can help with.
The last thing HR needs is another job
This is probably one of my biggest things with employee engagement technology.
It can look fantastic in a presentation.
Then you discover HR has to run the whole thing manually.
That’s not going to work.
If recognising somebody means emailing HR, HR emailing finance, finance approving something, somebody buying a voucher, somebody sending the voucher and then someone updating a spreadsheet…
We’ve lost already. People are busy.
Recognition needs to fit into the way people actually work.
Managers should be able to recognise.
Employees should be able to recognise each other.
HR should be able to see what’s happening.Finance should have visibility over reward spend.
And nobody should need a 40-page instruction manual to figure it out.
That's a big part of why we've built WowThanks the way we have
When we started developing WowThanks, we didn’t want to build another portal with a huge list of discounts and call it employee engagement.
We also didn’t want to build a heavyweight enterprise system that takes six months to implement.
The idea is much simpler.
Recognise your people. Reward the moments that matter. And help employees get more from the money they’re already earning.
So within WowThanks, an employee might get a shout-out from their manager.
They might recognise a colleague.
They might celebrate a birthday or work anniversary.
They might earn points.
And then outside work, they might use WowThanks to save on cinema tickets, a meal out, a hotel break, fitness, shopping or something else they were going to buy anyway.
For Irish employers, we’re also putting a major focus on making it easier to structure and administer qualifying rewards around the Small Benefit Exemption.
It brings the whole thing together.
And I think that’s where the opportunity is
This isn’t about pretending employee discounts replace salary. They don’t.
And recognition certainly doesn’t replace fair pay. But that’s not really the argument.
The question is:
Once you’ve paid someone fairly, what else can you do to make working for your business better?
Can you make sure good work gets noticed?
Can you celebrate people more often?
Can you reward the moments that really matter?
Can you help someone’s €50 go a little further when they’re taking the family out for the day?
Can you help them save on a weekend away?
Can you make better use of the money you’re already spending on employee rewards?
None of those things individually is revolutionary.
Put them together, though, and they start to create something quite powerful.
A workplace where people feel recognised.
Where meaningful moments are rewarded.
And where employees get a little more value from being part of the business.
And in the current environment, I think that’s worth quite a lot.
How far could your employee benefits budget go?
If you’re already spending money on employee rewards — or you’re thinking about introducing something for your team — it’s worth looking at how you could structure it.
We’ve created a straightforward Small Benefit Exemption Employer Guide explaining the €1,500 allowance, the five-benefit rule and some practical examples for Irish employers.
Or, if you’d rather just have a look at how WowThanks works, you can try the platform free for 30 days and see it from both the employer and employee side.
No massive transformation project.
Just a chance to see whether it could work for your people.
