2020: the year of change

At the beginning of December Twitter asked its followers to describe 2020 in one word. As you can imagine, some of them are unrepeatable in polite society, while others tapped into their sense of humour with contributions such as ‘Unsubscribe’, ‘Mute’, ‘Grounded’, ‘Defer’. Of the posts I looked at, the majority focused on wanting to move on and forget about 2020. But I’d like to suggest that this year wasn’t a complete write-off.

Little did we know at the beginning of the year that our lives would look completely different just a few short months later. At REBA, like in most organisations, we began 2020 by implementing all of the plans we had for the year ahead. Key topics on our radar were health and wellbeing, financial wellbeing, the increasing interest in environmental, social and governance issues, the role of company purpose in reward strategy, and diversity and inclusion.

Despite the turmoil of this year, what has been particularly noticeable is that all of these above trends have not only featured heavily, but have been accelerated.

Overnight health and wellbeing shot up the agenda because of Covid-19. Many employers took immediate action to implement additional support for employees. Our own Employee Wellbeing Research, which included survey findings collected during the first lockdown and featured case studies from employers responding at the time, illustrated just how quickly businesses had pivoted to put employee health and wellbeing first.

Another key event in 2020 was the murder of George Floyd, the subsequent street protests and rapid rise of the Black Lives Matter movement. Magnified by the impact of social media, it spurred one of the biggest tests of corporate authenticity, as businesses were challenged to not only validate their inclusivity claims, but to stand up as anti-racist.

These two catalysts have seen the need for authentic, compassionate and kind leadership. Employee wellbeing, diversity, equity and inclusion, and company purpose have all culminated to make us look at the world of work in new ways.

REBA’s content director, Maggie Williams, describes why racism is a reward and benefits issue in her blog article. She concludes that 2020 is: “an opportunity to rethink every aspect of reward and benefits, to make them fairer, more inclusive and better suited to every individual in the workforce.”

Reinventing the world of work has been a key theme throughout this year. REBA’s extensive webinar series explored a wide range of reward and employee benefits issues of importance to our Members. Our Covid-19 research series analysed how employers are having to re-evaluate their offerings, from what type of benefits to offer employees who are now home-based, to the impact on pensions, financial wellbeing and whether regional pay weighting will be relegated to the past.

With such intense change to cope with, our Professional Members have needed the support of the wider reward and benefits community more than ever. We have collaborated with many of you to share experiences and insights – from how you’ve dealt with the pandemic, to your approach to diversity and inclusion and forward looking plans for 2021. Our rebaLINK peer-to-peer service has also been a source of support, helping fellow professionals with everything from electric car allowances to pay transparency.

In many respects 2020 has been a truly horrific year, but it has also been a catalyst for change. It has forced us to rethink the way we do things, to question why and if there’s a better way, and to fundamentally appreciate and respect each other more.

#Buildbackbetter should be the mantra we all use going forward.

The author is Dawn Lewis, content editor at REBA.