There is something about seeing “28 days paid holiday” listed under the benefits section of a job advert that makes me want to roll my eyes. Not because 28 days holiday isn’t good, it’s fine, it’s just it’s the statutory minimum entitled by law for employees working full-time, so why is it being classed as a benefit?
When I see:
Benefits:
28 days holiday
Pension
Free tea and coffee
…I can’t help thinking: Is that really a benefits package?
What’s next? Fresh tap water? A chair? The legally required minimum wage?
Perhaps I’m being slightly unfair. But the point is that the expectations people have of their employers have changed and I don’t think all job adverts have caught up.
The minimum isn’t a benefit
If a company offers 28 days including bank holidays, that’s the legal minimum. If it offers 28 days plus bank holidays, you may be onto something you can add to your benefits list, and if you’re offering 30, 32, 35 or more days of annual leave, you’ll have candidates with kids who dread the summer holidays doing back flips of excitement before they’ve even applied for the role.
The same applies to anything else an employer is legally required to provide. There is a difference between meeting the basic employment requirements and offering something that makes someone think, “That sounds like somewhere I’d actually like to work.”
What people want from work has changed
The idea that people simply want a salary and a job title feels increasingly outdated. Work takes up a huge part of our lives, so naturally people are thinking more carefully about what they’re getting in return for that time.
Randstad’s 2026 Employer Brand Research found that work-life balance is the top priority for 64% of the UK workforce, with 43% saying a lack of work-life balance is the primary reason they would leave their employer. It also found that 45% of workers want flexible working arrangements that respect their lives outside work.
The pandemic fundamentally changed the conversation around where and how we work. People discovered that a commute wasn’t always necessary. Parents discovered that flexibility could make balancing work and family considerably easier. Employees experienced different ways of working and, for many, realised they didn’t want to go back to the old way simply because that’s how things had always been done.
Once you’ve experienced flexibility, it’s difficult to convince yourself that sitting at a desk from 9 until 5, five days a week, is automatically better. Flexibility isn’t just something people say they would quite like, recent research from Reed found that 36% of jobseekers are looking for more flexibility and a better work-life balance, while 34% want better benefits. The research also found that 29% are looking for more career progression, skills development and training.
The message is pretty clear, people aren’t just asking, “How much will you pay me?” They’re asking, “What will working here actually be like?”
So what makes a benefit a benefit?
This is where things get interesting. Many employers worry about the cost of additional benefits to their business, however, a genuinely attractive benefits package doesn’t necessarily need to cost a fortune. In fact, some of the things employees value most aren’t particularly expensive for an employer to offer.
Imagine two job adverts.
The first says:
‘28 days holiday, pension, free parking and a competitive salary.’
The second says:
‘30 days holiday plus bank holidays, flexible start and finish times, hybrid working, private healthcare, enhanced parental leave, a dedicated training budget and a clear progression framework.’
Which one makes you want to find out more? The difference isn’t necessarily the salary. While some of these things would come at a cost to a business, for example arranging private healthcare, it’s a cost that could be worth it to find the right long-term employee.
It’s the feeling that the second employer has thought about what it is actually like to be an employee. Maybe flexibility means being able to start at 9am and finish at 4pm so someone can do the school run. Maybe it means working from home when you need to. Maybe it means compressing your hours or simply having a manager who trusts you to get your work done without watching the clock.
That’s a benefit and so is access to counselling when life gets difficult, private medical care, dental cover, enhanced maternity and paternity leave, additional pension contributions, income protection and a proper training budget that employees can actually use rather than a vague promise that “development opportunities are available”.
Progression matters too. Randstad’s 2025 Workmonitor research found that 46% of workers would quit a job that didn’t offer career progression opportunities, while almost half said they would be likely to reject a job if it didn’t provide enough opportunities for learning and development. That’s worth thinking about when writing a job advert.
“Opportunity to progress” sounds nice, but actually showing someone how they can progress is much better.
And please stop saying “competitive salary” if it isn’t
There is another phrase that appears on an awful lot of job adverts: Competitive salary.
Competitive with what? Candidates can research salaries in minutes. They can compare similar roles, look at job boards, speak to people in their network and find salary information online.
So if your salary genuinely is competitive, great. Say what the salary range is.
Because “competitive salary” can sometimes read like: “We’d rather not tell you how much we’re paying until we’ve found out how little you’re prepared to accept.”
Transparency is increasingly important. If you’re paying well above market rate, tell people. If there’s a bonus structure, explain it. If there are annual salary reviews, say so. If there are shares or an employee ownership scheme, explain how it works.
The best benefits make people’s lives better
This is probably the biggest thing employers need to understand. A benefit isn’t valuable because it sounds impressive in a job advert. It only becomes valuable if someone actually wants it.
A free gym membership might be brilliant for one person and completely useless to another. A subsidised commute might be fantastic for someone travelling into the office every day but irrelevant to somebody who lives up the road.
A company Christmas party isn’t going to compensate for a terrible manager and a fruit bowl isn’t going to fix burnout. The best benefits are the ones that recognise employees are actual people with lives, families, responsibilities, ambitions and interests outside the business.
That could mean a cycle-to-work scheme for someone who wants to ditch the car, free parking or a fuel allowance for someone who has no realistic public transport option, enhanced parental leave that goes beyond the statutory minimum, paid volunteering days for someone who wants to give something back, a birthday day off or a sabbatical after a certain number of years. Offering a range of benefits is often the best way because they won’t always be used by everyone, but there should be something that appeals to everyone.
Understanding that someone can be ambitious about their career and still want to make it to their child’s school assembly, those are often the things that matter.
People are no longer prepared to accept less just because that’s how it has always been done
I don’t think this means employees have suddenly become demanding, I think they’ve become more informed. People have more access to information about salaries, workplace culture and employee experiences than ever before. They can read reviews, compare job adverts and ask people directly what it’s like to work somewhere.
They’ve also experienced different ways of working and once you know something can be done differently, it’s natural to question why it isn’t.
Randstad has described this as a shift in workforce expectations, with UK employees increasingly assessing employers on work-life balance, culture and opportunities for personal growth alongside pay. Its 2025 research found that work-life balance had overtaken salary as the top priority for British employees.
That doesn’t mean salary doesn’t matter, that goes without saying really, we all want to pay the bills and afford a few luxuries and with the current cost of living, people need to be paid properly.
But the conversation has expanded, people want good pay and a good place to work. They want to know they can have a career without sacrificing their entire personal life, to feel valued, have flexibility, be led by genuinely good people and have benefits they can actually use.
Employers need to sell the job, not just fill the vacancy
Ultimately, a job advert is a sales document. You’re asking someone to give you a significant chunk of their time, energy and expertise in exchange for a salary.
Why should they choose you?
If the answer in your job advert is simply “28 days holiday and a pension”, you haven’t really answered the question. It’s time to tell candidates what makes your company different and if there aren’t any obvious benefits or key differentiators it’s time to make some.
The world of work has changed and employers need to change with it. Employees aren’t asking for the impossible; they’re asking for a job that works alongside their life, not one that takes it over.
So, by all means, tell candidates about your holiday allowance, pension and everything else you offer. But don’t stop at the things everyone else offers, or worse, the things you’re legally required to provide.
If you want the best people to choose your business, show them why they should. Show them how you support them, how you help them grow, how you give them flexibility and what you do to make working for you genuinely better.
Because in a job market where candidates have more choice, more information and higher expectations than ever, the companies that offer more than the minimum are the ones that give people a reason to stay.
