6 steps to managing successful benefits change
Here we provide six top tips to help you embrace change and deliver a successful scheme – without turning-off or inciting the wrath of your workforce:
1) Adopt a clear methodology
It’s essential to ensure you have a robust process that includes talking to staff, looking at market research and benchmarking information. You need to find out how changes will impact you as an organisation, and model different scenarios so you don’t get any nasty shocks. We use a proven approach we call simply discover, design and deliver, which provides the information, data and research we need to help make recommendations for change.
2) Review the whole change programme to understand where you are
You need a firm research foundation and the appropriate due diligence in place to support your chosen strategy. By taking a consulting, data-led approach you’ll know exactly what employees want, enabling you to deliver change and earn the support of the workforce quicker.
3) Assess the programme’s likely impact on employees
Ask yourself whether the changes you’re making will further business objectives and make employees better off. If you take away an employee’s DB pension scheme for example, this will leave a significant hole in their benefits programme and they’ll need to be compensated. You don’t want to end up spending more as an organisation, so find a strategy that creates the largest possible number of winners.
4) Change and communicate
Begin the process by clearly stating what the change will be and how this links to long-term business strategy. Messages need to filter through appropriate communications channels so that employees know what’s going on and understand that the business cares about their views.
5) Ensuring future success
Once you’ve consulted employees on changes and begin implementation, ensure you iron-out any glitches and swiftly bed-down the new system as the norm.
6) Business as usual
You may feel you’ve reached Nirvana but there is no time to rest on your laurels. You need to measure yourself regularly against your new principles and engage employees in the process on an ongoing basis to ensure their continued buy-in.
Stick to the above simple steps and there’s no reason to fear or avoid change. Yes, it can take time and may even be unpredictable, but as long as you keep the problem you want to solve and why at the forefront of your mind, and create objectives and new principles before you begin design, you will succeed.
To learn more about how you can successfully complete a major benefits change, view our webinar ‘How Can You Make Major Benefits Change A Positive’.
Jack Curzon is head of scheme design at Thomsons Online Benefits.
This article was provided by Thomsons Online Benefits.
