Employee Benefits Index: Who offers the best benefits?

With many industries now offering more flexible working options, it’s never been more important to offer a competitive benefits package.

This is especially true for Gen Z with new research showing that up to 55% of 18-34-year-olds say that a good benefits package is the most important factor when going for a job, meaning that offering tangible benefits (such as employee share schemes) is more important than ever to attract young talent. 

But when it comes to it, what industries offer the best benefits?

To find out, our team crunched the numbers, using data from Indeed to search for 20 common benefits found in job descriptions, and filtered the results by industry. 

We then took the resulting number of jobs listed and divided this by the total number of jobs currently listed in the UK on Indeed. This gave us the percentage of jobs in each sector that feature a specific benefit.

In order to create the overall ranking, we gave each industry a weighted score out of 100, based on the percentage of jobs that had each benefit, and totalled up the scores to give a score out of 2,000. The higher the score, the better the benefits packages offered in that industry.

At Vestd, our expert researchers looked at the following industries: 

• Aerospace & Defence
• Government & Public Administration
• Telecommunications
• Information Technology
• Manufacturing
• Insurance
• Energy, Mining & Utilities
• Agriculture
• Finance
• Media & Communications
• Legal
• Construction, Repair & Maintenance Services
• Hotels & Travel Accommodation
• Human Resources
• Arts, Entertainment & Recreation
• Education
• Healthcare
• Transport & Logistics
• Retail & Wholesale
• Real Estate
• Pharmaceuticals & Biotechnology
• Personal Consumer Services
• Restaurant & Food Service
• Management & Consulting
• Non-Profit & NGO

We also looked at the following common benefits found in job descriptions: 

• Company Share Schemes
• Hybrid/Flexible Working
• Free/On-site parking
• Bonus
• Cycle To Work
• Employee Discount
• Life Insurance
• Private Medical Insurance
• Referral Programme
• Childcare
• Company Car
• Subsidised Gym Membership
• Enhanced Maternity Leave
• Enhanced Paternity Leave
• Income Protection
• Private Dental Insurance
• Bereavement Leave
• Profit Sharing
• Health & Wellbeing Programme

Employee Benefits Index - top ten Industries

Aerospace and defence leads the way for industries offering the best benefits package to employees with a score of 994. After analysing up to 3,000 job descriptions in the sector, it was found that hybrid/flexible working was the most commonly offered benefit.

Some of the companies currently recruiting in this sector include MI6, Virgin Atlantic and United Airlines. Coming up in second in the index was the government and public administration sector with an index score of 877. 

The telecommunications industry rounded out the top three industries offering the best benefits with a score of 802 on the index. After analysing over 3,300 job descriptions, we found that a company bonus was the most commonly offered job perk in the industry. 

On the flip side, there are industries that have more work to do in offering prospective employees an attractive benefits package. 

Top ten industries with the most work to do

At the bottom of the table, non-profit & NGOs were found to be the industries with work to do on offering an attractive benefits package with an index score of just 85. While charities and not-for-profit organisations are focused on delivering the best value for the causes they support, there are some cost-effective improvements to their benefits packages that could help them to attract even more talent.

The management and consulting industry was also found to be lacking in its range of benefits being offered to prospective employees with an index score of just 207. Despite there being just over 7,800 jobs live on Indeed for the industry, the most popular job perk offered in the industry was hybrid/flexible working. 

Perhaps unsurprisingly, restaurant and food service is also lingering towards the bottom of the index with a large proportion of the industry’s jobs made up of young workers in part-time roles. It received an Index score of 216 despite there being over 12,900 live job adverts on the platform at the time of data collection. 

But when it comes to offering a company share scheme, including the likes of growth shares, unapproved options or an EMI scheme, which industries are leading the way? 

Top ten industries offering share schemes

With it dominating the overall rankings, the aerospace and defence industry is also leading the way in providing company share scheme options to employees. The insurance, IT and finance industries all feature among the leading sectors in the provision of company share schemes as they round out the top 10. 

The hospitality and retail sectors made a surprising appearance in the top 10 as hotels and travel accommodation and retail and wholesale both feature highly in the index as industries offering employees share options. 

Founder & CEO at Vestd, Ifty Nasir, commented on the research:

While many companies like to shout about the office pool table or mini bar, we’re seeing people veering away from these sorts of quirky benefits while on the hunt for their next role. 

“Given the cost of living crisis, employees are now on the lookout for tangible benefits that offer a true reward for their hard work or help them to achieve their day-to-day duties in the role.

"Employees are much more inclined to buy into the ethos of the company if they’re given shares as part of their compensation package. According to our research, 45% of businesses that responded said that having a share scheme in place made it easier to attract talent.

“It’s interesting to see the likes of retail and hospitality among the biggest providers of share options among the expected industries but it certainly draws attention for the need of other industries to follow suit.”

View the research in full

Methodology

Vestd used the job search engine Indeed, to search for 20 common benefits found in job descriptions, and filtered the search by industry.

We then took the resulting number of jobs listed and divided this by the number of total number of jobs currently listed in the UK on Indeed. The resulting percentage gives us an indication into how often a specific job benefit appears on a job description within that industry.

In order to create the overall ranking, we gave each industry a weighted score out of 100, based on the percentage of jobs that had each benefit, and totalled up the scores to give a score out of 2000. The higher the score, the better the benefits packages offered in that industry.