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25 Sep 2020

How reward and benefits strategies can support leaders to build great places to work

Reward and benefit strategies have a powerful role to play in the workplace. As well as helping to attract and retain employees, they can support leaders seeking to build a great place to work.

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This comes in two key ways. First, within the benefits package itself there will be tools that leaders can use to motivate and support employees. Second, as the reward and benefits strategy itself can send out some very powerful signals about what it’s like to work for the organisation, it’s important that leaders pay close attention to what’s on offer.

These are some of the ways to support leaders to ensure they can get the most from the organisation’s reward and benefits strategy:

1. Provide tools for motivation

Think about which benefits will motivate employees when designing your programme. A regular survey can help to identify what they’d value and would appreciate in their benefits package. As communication is also a key part of delivering this, make sure leaders are well versed in what’s available and can flag up the value of different benefits.  

2. Enable flexibility and personalisation

Being able to tailor reward and benefits to an individual employee is incredibly powerful, helping to create a strong bond between them and their employer. As well as giving leaders the ability to award bonuses and rewards when appropriate, consider a wellbeing budget to allow individuals or teams to design the support they’d really value. Flexibility, over hours and workloads, can also feed into this, especially where budgets are tight.

3. Support wellbeing

Employees value organisations that look after their wellbeing. Research conducted by Legal & General found that 53% of employees would be more likely to apply to an organisation that has a mental health and wellbeing policy in place. Its importance was even more pronounced among younger people, with 73% of 25-34-year olds saying they’d check out a company’s mental health policy before considering an application.

4. Help them identify issues

Training your leaders to recognise the early signs that an employee is struggling sends out very positive signals about the supportive nature of the organisation. In addition, by having initiatives in place such as an employee assistance programme, occupational health or a virtual GP service, employees are able to access support quickly and at a much earlier point. This reduces the level of support they might need at a later date and greatly increases the chances of a full recovery.

5. Offer diversity

A diverse workforce drives creativity, productivity and employee and customer engagement. To help nurture this, ensure that leaders have a diverse range of benefits to offer employees. A free gym membership might be fantastic for some of your employees, but those with families can really value access to protection products and more flexibility.  

6. Build a benefits brand

The way reward and benefits are communicated can make a huge difference to how they’re perceived. Using a brand makes it much easier to bring everything together and demonstrate to employees how much the organisation provides for their benefit. The brand can also say something about the business and what it stands for that can never be communicated through a list of benefit options.

This article is provided by Legal & General.

In partnership with Legal & General

One of the UK's leading group protection providers with over 85 years' experience.

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