Insider tips to save you time when reviewing your benefits technology

There are many reasons why you may feel you need to review your benefits technology. It may be that you want to ensure your employees are actively engaged in your benefit scheme or to ensure your benefits strategy is aligned with your business strategy. It may be a while since you last reviewed what's on offer or you may be getting data errors from your existing technology. Or you might be aiming to have a best in class benefits scheme. Whatever the reason you may be considering a change of benefits strategy or provider as a result.

But what should you look out for? Having been selling into the reward and benefits technology space across the US and UK markets for over a decade I thought I'd share my experience of this market to give you a head start and avoid some pitfalls.

Mind the gap

It can be difficult to differentiate between the providers in this market and their solutions. As a result of mergers and consolidation of providers, along with sales people and consultants moving around, the individual messaging and services provided tend to blend together. Most of the key players have a similar message with a few small differences. These differences come down to six key elements - technology, consultancy, broking, communications, administration and employee helpdesk.

Not all providers have all six under one roof. It is up to you to find the gaps and decide if they are deal breakers. Most providers offer at least four of the six. However, in my opinion no provider is currently best across all areas for all sizes of business. So this makes it a challenge to make sure you partner with a provider that matches your specific requirements whilst also challenging you to improve your strategy.

Many providers may encourage you to keep what you have now regardless of the scheme being fit for purpose, just to win your business. Others will review your programme and provide constructive and informed advice on improvements to engage your employees.

Look before you leap

Before you contract with another provider you need to consider the shortlist carefully. Are you kicking out the incumbent to replace them with a similar situation? Could the current relationship be salvaged with improvements to service, commercials, support continuity, etc… or do you need to bite the bullet and change.

Remember father time

All too often I see organisations ready to make the move but they need to put all plans on hold because they had not accounted for the time it takes to perform due diligence and contract with a new supplier. Then there is the implementation / migration.

I recommend looking at your window opening (if you have an annual enrolment) or your next mid-year election and work backwards roughly 6-9 months. This gives you a few weeks to co-ordinate and run a staff survey and set up meetings with suppliers to get up to speed with the current benefits technology space and innovation.

Key tip – use these meetings to gather information and start to scope out the project. You can also figure out which providers are easy to work with and could be a good trusted partner.

Then it will take between 4-8 weeks to run an informal or formal RfP process to short list 2-3 suppliers and scope out your new strategy.

Slow down

It might be a cliché but remember “fools rush in”. Take a step back when you have finalised your short list and look at the key points that are important to you. If you are fed up with data being wrong and spend valuable time fixing this on a regular basis, don’t pick another portal that looks good but has manual or unfinished processes manipulating the data.

If you have a predominantly offline employee population and your current provider only offers basic communications help and advice, perhaps you need to look at one that has experience dealing with a similar demographic to yours.

The point is, find out the key elements you care about and make sure you spend your time drilling into those points carefully and listen to the answers. If they gloss over the detail with slick presentations and whizzy slides, don’t be fooled into thinking it will all be OK.

Looking ahead

These are exciting times, with a lot of choice and keen potential partners that want to earn your business. It’s up to you to make sure that this new partner can look after your current and future strategy. Every organisation is on a benefits journey and where you stop is only dependent on the partner you choose and your imagination.

Alan Meyers is business development director at Staffcare.

This article was provided by Staffcare.