Best Work-From-Home Employee Perks (UK 2026)

Work-from-home is a permanent fixture of UK working life now. Around 28% of UK workers do at least some remote work each week, and a steady majority of knowledge workers in London, Manchester and Edinburgh work hybrid or fully remote. Yet most company perks programmes are still designed for an office-centric workforce — gym memberships near the office, free fruit in the kitchen, lunchtime yoga in the meeting room. This guide covers the perks that actually work for distributed UK teams: what is worth investing in, what is theatre, and how to tailor a perks scheme to genuinely support remote and hybrid workers.

The four pillars of a credible WFH perks programme

Effective remote-worker perks fall into four categories:

• Home-office setup — equipment, ergonomics, connectivity.
• Recurring expense subsidies — broadband, energy, mobile.
• At-home wellbeing — fitness apps, mental-health support, food delivery.
• Connection and inclusion — co-working passes, in-person event budgets, home-delivered company experiences.

Each pillar matters. Skip any of them and you have a programme that quietly leaves remote workers feeling they get less than office colleagues.

Pillar 1: home-office setup

The ergonomic-equipment budget

The single highest-ROI WFH perk. £200–£400 one-off for a sit-stand desk, ergonomic chair, monitor, riser, keyboard and mouse. Fully expensable, no questions asked beyond a receipt. The cost is real but pays for itself in avoided long-term back-pain absence within 18 months — see the analysis in our wellbeing perks guide.

Logitech, Dell and Steelcase have employee-purchase schemes that stretch the budget further. See current tech offers.

The work-laptop refresh cycle

For remote workers, the laptop is the office. A 4-year-old MacBook with degraded battery is a productivity tax invisible to a manager who never sees it. A 3-year refresh cycle, with the option to keep the old machine for personal use, is well-received and keeps the workforce productive.

The broadband stipend

£20–£35 per month towards home broadband for full-time remote workers. Real money, real perceived value, and the case for treating it as a genuine business expense is strong. Sky Broadband and Virgin Media run partner schemes that make this even more cost-effective. Current broadband offers.

The home-energy contribution

Less common but increasingly meaningful. £10–£15 per month towards home heating/electricity for full-time remote workers, particularly during winter. Combined with HMRC's £6/week working-from-home tax allowance, this materially offsets the higher home-running cost.

Pillar 2: recurring expense subsidies

Mobile phone allowance

Where a company expects out-of-hours availability, a £20–£40/month phone allowance — or a fully-paid business mobile contract — is fair. Business contracts (negotiated through brokers like Compare The Networks) typically beat retail SIM-only plans by 20–35% — see our business mobile guide.

Co-working day passes

For remote workers who occasionally need a change of scenery, 2–4 co-working day passes per month at £15–£25 each is generous. WeWork On Demand, Spaces, Patch and many independent co-working chains have UK-wide schemes that work with this model. £30–£100/employee/month, used genuinely twice a month, is excellent value.

Pillar 3: at-home wellbeing

On-demand fitness — Peloton App, Apple Fitness+

For remote workers nowhere near a chain gym, the on-demand fitness app outperforms a chain-gym corporate scheme. Peloton App (no bike required) costs ~£10/month and gives access to thousands of strength, yoga, running, meditation and stretching classes. Apple Fitness+ at ~£10/month integrates with Apple Watch and is similarly broad. Current Peloton offer.

Food delivery — Deliveroo Plus, Just Eat

For remote workers, lunch from home is free; lunch out is occasional. A Deliveroo Plus subscription (free delivery on orders over £15) saves £40–£100/year for an employee who orders even modestly often. The cost to the employer is negligible if structured as a subsidised individual sub. Current Deliveroo offer.

EAP and mental-health support

Particularly important for remote workers. Isolation is a real driver of mental-health risk in distributed teams. A 24/7 EAP (Spectrum.Life, Health Assured) at ~£30/employee/year is high-leverage. Current EAP partners.

Pillar 4: connection and inclusion

The in-person event budget

Two or three in-person team gatherings a year, fully paid. £400–£800 per employee per year is a credible budget. The cost is real but the alternative — a team that has never met in person — has measurable culture, retention and productivity costs.

The home-delivered company experience

For office-bound "company moments" — birthdays, milestones, all-hands — sending a small home-delivered package (drinks, food, a book) makes remote workers feel included rather than overlooked. £15–£25 per occasion, a few times a year.

Cultural participation budget

Treat the office's cultural moments — Friday-afternoon drinks, summer barbecues — as fungible. "Spend £10–£15 on yourself, take a photo, share it in #social". Modest but inclusive.

WFH perks budget for a typical remote employee

Roughly £160/month per remote employee. Well within the cost range of an office desk in a UK city centre, and arguably better-value compared to per-desk office rents in central London or Manchester.

Perks that are theatre for WFH

Some perks designed for office life translate poorly to remote — and continuing them creates a gap remote workers notice:

• Free office snacks — irrelevant to remote workers; either replace with a remote-equivalent or scrap.
• Lunchtime exercise classes — useless for remote staff. Replace with on-demand fitness app subsidies.
• Cinema/restaurant near the office — useless if the office is in London and the employee is in Newcastle.

Audit your existing perks programme. Anything that requires being physically near the office should either be available remote-equivalent or removed for fairness reasons.

The hybrid trap

Companies running "3 days in office, 2 days remote" hybrid policies often mistakenly believe they need only office-centric perks. They do not. Even hybrid workers are remote-enough on home days that the broadband stipend and ergonomic budget are valuable. Hybrid policies should treat remote days as first-class.

Bottom line

Remote and hybrid workers deserve a perks programme designed around how they actually work. The four pillars — setup, expense subsidies, at-home wellbeing, connection — cover the bases. Total spend of around £1,500–£2,000 per remote employee per year delivers genuine value and is competitive with the implicit benefit of an office desk. Browse current WFH-friendly perks.