When it comes to employee attitudes about what binds them totheir employers, perks are just gimmicks. What counts? Corebenefits and compensation.

Related: Trendy office perks are dumb

That’s according to a report by industry analyst GeorgeLaRocque, released by New York City-based payroll and benefitssoftware developer Namely. The report indicates that in their quest tobuild a healthy company culture, employers should be focusing onthe big things — core benefits and compensation — before they startadding employee engagement perks such as recognition, wellness, orrewards programs.

While the pressure is on for human resources professionals inthe middle market to deploy strategic HR to produce results forcompany execs and an increasingly active regulatory environment,the report pointed to the best results lying in differentdirections.

Related: So, are wellness plans actually worthit?

Employees’ goals are to find meaningful work, experienceefficient HR processes and receive competitive benefits, while thegreatest potential return on investments comes from money put intocore HR technology and improved employee benefits.

Gimmicks and perks, not so much. They may make great soundbites,but asked to rate employer-provided perks, 54 percent of employeeschose “benefits and paid time off” as those that most driveengagement.

Asked which perks they felt had the greatest return oninvestment potential, almost 60 percent of those middle-marketemployees ranked “benefits and paid time off” well above rewardsprograms, team outings, office environment, snacks and recognition.So much for window dressing.

Related: Employee benefits are the newsalary

HR spends a lot of time considering the issue of employeeengagement, but on the other side of the company, Namely said thatfinance has little priority around investing in it. Only 37 percentof respondents characterized finance’s priority level on measuringemployee engagement, satisfaction or happiness as a “priority” or“significant priority.” It’s so unimportant to the finance end thatonly 8 percent of company respondents have actually implemented astrategy across their enterprise to measure employeeengagement.

Instead, Namely reported that finance leaders are willing toincrease budgets for such core HR initiatives as benefits (39percent) or learning and development (34 percent), since they knowthose are important to employees.