The world of employee benefits never stands still. The pandemic hastened developments, and there has never been more choice. The dilemma is which ones should employers offer their staff? The most important thing is to make them relevant, targeted and personalised to your own particular workforce.<\/p>\n
As one leading HR Director says: \u2018Personalised offerings provide a greater sense of connection between the employee and the organisation.\u2019<\/p>\n
Workforce demographics<\/strong><\/p>\n To do this, it\u2019s important to have a handle on the particular demographics of your workforce. This is as relevant for small employers as it is for large. Consider age, gender, lifestyle, whether or not they have dependants: this can all give an indication as to which benefits might be most relevant.<\/p>\n For instance, advice on pensions investments is likely to be different for a younger workforce than an older one.<\/p>\n But it\u2019s also important not to make assumptions. Life assurance may typically appeal to older employees, but younger employees with financial commitments are also likely to see the advantages. Private Medical Insurance (PMI) may be utilised more heavily by older employees, but research shows it\u2019s also viewed as one of the most valuable employee benefits across a workforce.<\/p>\n Ask, ask and ask again<\/strong><\/p>\n Running an employee survey can be a great way to find out what really excites your employees.<\/p>\n If you find that support for fitness, health and wellbeing is really important to them, then that can be a great starting point to look at the options. It doesn\u2019t have to mean gold-plated PMI across the board, in practice it might mean offering access to cycle-to-work schemes, fitness apps or discounted physio: benefits that are very affordable but highly valued.<\/p>\n It\u2019s really valuable to run a survey again after benefits have been implemented to measure understanding and appreciation.<\/p>\n Engagement is good for business<\/strong><\/p>\n Engaging employees with benefits helps to engage them with the company, and that\u2019s good for business. Research shows that engaged employees\u00a0are more likely to stay with the organisation, perform 20 per cent better than their colleagues and act as advocates of the business.<\/p>\n A good measurement of engagement with employee benefits is to look at the utilisation of them. Is the employee assistance programme (EAP) accessed, are helplines used, have employees increased their pension contributions?<\/p>\n Utilisation is a really good sign that benefits are relevant.<\/p>\n However, poor utilisation is not necessarily an indication that they\u2019re not. It might well be the case that employees just don\u2019t know about the benefits on offer or how to access them.<\/p>\n Communicate the relevance<\/strong><\/p>\n We\u2019re experts at communicating the detail of employee benefits, bringing them to life, and explaining the relevance to different demographics.<\/p>\n We can explain the impact of increasing pension contributions; the importance of reviewing pension investment options; the relevance of life assurance\/critical illness\/income protection at different life stages; how to get the most value from health and wellbeing benefits; and \u2013 vitally \u2013 how to access them.<\/p>\n Hearing from experts can make all the difference to staff. Whether via webinar, intranet, flyers or other \u2013 targeted communications can demonstrate the value to each individual.<\/p>\n Personalised<\/strong><\/p>\n When employees see the personal relevance of the benefits that they\u2019re offered, they not only feel more engaged with the benefit, they feel more engaged with their employer too. And this increases their value to both.<\/p>\n The right employee benefits support retention and engagement, and it can support recruitment too.<\/p>\n Sixty per cent of people report that benefits are a major factor in considering whether to accept a job offer. So if you\u2019re looking to recruit a particular demographic, then a good place to start is to look at the benefits that are going to attract them.<\/p>\n Relevant, targeted and personalised employee benefits are key differentiators for employers of choice.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The world of employee benefits never stands still. The pandemic hastened developments, and there has never been more choice. The dilemma is which ones should employers offer their staff? The most important thing is to make them relevant, targeted and personalised to your own particular workforce. As one leading HR Director says: \u2018Personalised offerings provide […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":27083,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[24,31,32],"tags":[],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wingatebs.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27082"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wingatebs.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wingatebs.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wingatebs.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wingatebs.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27082"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.wingatebs.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27082\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wingatebs.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/27083"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wingatebs.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27082"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wingatebs.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27082"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wingatebs.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27082"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}