Leftfield Ideas To Keep Your Workforce Engaged Forget the once-a-year employee barbecue some companies are taking employee incentives to a whole nother level. Chinese company Tiens Group celebrated its 20th birthday by taking 6,400 employees on a four-day, all-expense paid trip to France. (Side note: While in Nice, they also set a new Guinness World Record for longest human sentence).Tiens gesture might be a bit over the top for some, but the bar for employee incentives is getting higher. Free gourmet lunches, ping pong tables, and in-office yoga classes have become commonplace. Companies are getting creative with ideas that go beyond the standard year-end bonus to keep employees feeling engaged and appreciated. After all, money isnt everything especially for today new generation of workers (who, by the way, just overtook the preceding generation in terms of work numbers).Here are some examples of how some companies are saying thanks in creative new ways.Last year, Starbucks launched a tuition plan that unusual for its scope. The company offered to pay full tuition for the junior and senior years of online learning at Arizona State University. While employees dont get to choose their school, covering the entire year bill is quite a generous deal. And last month, the company made it even sweeter, expanding the offering to cover an entire undergraduate degree.Software company FullContact really wants its employees to take a break. Pushing back against today 24-7 workaholic society, the company offers employees $7500 towards an annual vacation what it calls paid PAID vacation with the condition that employees must totally disconnect from work. Company CEO Brett Lorang wrote this post explaining the motivation behind the move.An on-site Olympic-sized swimming pool and on-site dental services are two of the perks Oklahoma City gas producer Chesapeake Energy offers its employees. Oh, and Botox.Employees of sports outfitter Burton love the snow, as youd expect from a company that was an early snowboarding pioneer. So if two or more feet of snow falls within 24 hours, Burton closes up shop so workers can hit the slopes.What the point of working near the water if you dont have a boat? Redwood City, California-based iCracked, which repairs broken phones and sells phones, offers a full menu of perks: meals, choose your own hardware, field tripsand a company yacht.Watertown, Massachusetts-based UX design outfit Fresh Tilled Soil sends employees to envy-inducing places so they can refresh and have some fun while working and it fully covered by the company. Workations are becoming a thing. Hey, they worked for Uber.San Francisco communications company Asana gives new employees $10,000 to set up their workspaces however they like. That could cover the cost of a really nice ergonomic chair.Real estate startup 42Floors gives new employees pre-cations, time off before they have to show up at the office. The rationale is that it gives new hires a chance to recharge before adjusting to their new role, so the company has made it a requirement. 42Floors CEO and co-founder Jason Freedman told Slate of one recent hire: [H]e just came in so refreshed and energized; it was amazing.SAP likes to thank employees, too. The SAP Winner Circle is an all-expense paid trip to Hawaii for high-performing employees and their families. Interested in more ideas about how to adapt to the future of work? Take a look at SAP and Oxford Economics global survey Workforce 2020.For more insight on future-focused HR practices, see How Empowering Employees Creates a More Engaged Workforce.