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02 Oct 2018
by Tania Parmar

Seven clever ways to use reward and benefits data to improve your offering

Forward thinking employers are steering their entire reward and benefits proposition using data insights and employee feedback.

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With advances in technology and more interlinked data sets than ever before (forget those Excel spreadsheets), the translation of benefits data into meaningful information has never been simpler. With this data HR teams can now make smarter and better informed decisions on their reward strategies.

Here are seven clever ways that you can use data to enhance your reward and benefits offering.

1. Boost your communications

Sending out blanket communications can sometimes mean employees start to ignore them. Use your data to target the people you think are likely to be interested in certain benefits to make your communications more effective and increase engagement.

2. Ditch those benefits nobody uses

If you’re funding benefits that are unused or unvalued, then don’t be afraid to make changes. By analysing benefits that aren’t utilised, you’ll be able to concentrate your spend on benefits that employees engage with and value.

3. Invest in what matters to your people

Asking your people for feedback on their rewards and benefits can be a great way to engage your people with your business and enhance your employee value proposition. Be careful though; the data that you receive back isn’t always what you expect, so you need to be prepared to consider all outcomes and suggestions.

4. Show employees the value of their reward package

The CIPD suggests that the average employee underestimates their total remuneration at work by around 20 per cent. Implementing real-time Total Reward Statements can help your employees understand how their total remuneration changes over a period of time. Understanding the journey they’ve made and the improvements in their overall remuneration can have a big impact on how employees perceive the value of their employment.

5. Improve working environments

Work space and environment can be significantly altered based on individual employee data. Even the simplest of data you hold can give you an indication of their environmental needs. If, for example, you employ someone who has a young child, lives an hours commute from your office and was recently off work with short-term sickness, could allowing them to work from home or use flexible working hours support their work/life balance?

6. Help career progression

Say you have someone who is in an entry-level HR position. Consider the possibilities of having a platform with artificial intelligence capabilities which informed that person that “if you take this course… if you go to this training day… if you watch this video… you’ll be well positioned to get XYZ qualification which will get you up to being an HR consultant”.

7. Address your organisation’s health challenges

Your private medical insurance, group income protection, absence, cash plan and employee assistance programme data is invaluable. It can provide you with a comprehensive view of your workplace health trends, how they’re affecting employee productivity, absence and associated benefit costs. These insights can give you the strategic foundation to plan targeted initiatives that address your organisation’s health challenges.

Final thoughts

We spend so much time focussing on data that represents our customers; what they’re doing, what they’re buying, how much they’re spending, that we sometimes lose sight of one of the most important parts of our organisation; our people. Having access to real-time management information about your people; their wants, needs and current situations, at the touch of a button, can help your HR teams and business leaders gather the evidence they need to make more informed decisions on their reward strategy.

The author is Tania Parmar, consultant at Johnson Fleming.

This article was provided by Johnson Fleming.

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