How to bring innovation to the way you manage reward and benefits
What your employees are looking for
When looking at the benefits available to them, employees want to see a clear and concise overview. Convenience, simplicity and ease-of-use will help employees not only find exactly what they’re looking for, but find things that they didn’t know could benefit them. If employees see promotional material for a particular aspect of your offering, they’ll want a quick and easy way to access it online. If we need an answer to a question, more often than not it’s a few clicks away.
The increasing rate of delivery of information and services is something we all get accustomed to and your benefits offering needs to follow this too.
It’s also worth considering that needs and wants can be created. Any technology that improves employees’ experience with your reward and benefits offering will be appreciated.
Take advantage of technology
It might sound simple, but putting everything your employees need in one place can make a big difference. A platform that clearly outlines where your different offerings are is much more likely to be effective. Think of it like this. You’re effectively marketing your benefits offering to your employees. Therefore you want your employees to find perks on your benefits platform in the least amount of clicks. In the same way that you want potential customers or clients to easily find your website.
What about how you reward employees? Rewarding employees has many benefits, and it’s always important for companies to consider. Having a hub as part of your benefits platform for your reward initiatives is a great start. Communicating your rewards for employees digitally has a number of benefits, especially for companies where employees are predominantly office-based, as employees are likely to have better access to their digital employee benefits platform. Furthermore, it encourages employees to access the platform more often, which could encourage them to make use of the benefits on offer. Rewards can also be shared company-wide more easily.
Innovative practices
You’ve probably heard it a lot already, but promoting a culture that promotes your benefits really does work. There are a few factors at play here. Word-of-mouth is the most obvious one. For example, if you have a company culture that promotes healthy living, and more people within your company are talking about it, your gym membership discounts are much more likely to be taken up. Furthermore, employees are much more likely to take up benefits if their colleagues or friends are too.
In terms of managing how you reward your employees offline, it sounds simple, but rewarding your employees more often has a number of benefits. At Apple, they reward all of their employees once every few weeks with a ‘beer bash’ with free food, beer and entertainment. Of course, in this instance it’s the principle we should pay attention to. Rewarding all employees every so often can be great for boosting morale.
How to measure the success
So, how do we measure the success of it all? Measuring the success doesn’t need to be complicated. The first place you’re probably going to look is at the metrics from your employee benefits platform. The more data you can gather about how your employees use your employee benefits platform, the better. It’s then up to you to determine how you interpret it.
Another thing to consider is the general wellbeing of your employees. Has it changed? Are they healthier? Less stressed? Better financially? Generally happier? Is your benefits offering helping? Sending out a survey to employees can give you a better idea of the general wellbeing of your employees.
In summary, take a look at your benefits offering and ask yourself, is it easy for employees to use?
This article was provided by Caboodle.
In partnership with Caboodle
Caboodle is one of the UK's leading employee benefits companies.
