03 Sep 2021

Three ways to unlock benefits data to enhance employee experience

We use data to forecast budgets, sales targets and headcount, and it’s time we apply this mindset to our employee benefits experience to make sure that our benefits are reaching our people in the best ways possible.

Here are three key datasets to look at to fuel your employee benefits strategy and improve the employee experience.

1. Usage

This seems like an obvious one, but the best benefits programmes are ones that you can see at a glance how many employees are engaging with them. This is where technology can be useful, either to poll your people after a new benefit has been launched to see if they are aware/engaging with it, or having an analytics dashboard to spot trends in usage. Depending on the type of benefit programme, you could look at data points such as overall spend on a discounts scheme, or the rate that employees are spending their flex pots to see how effective these programmes are. To drive further engagement, develop an ongoing communications plan for the benefits with lower take-up to bring more awareness to the great things your company has to offer.

2. Segmentation

Knowing the overall usage of your benefits is critical, but taking it a step further is where you can help make decisions to suit your employees’ needs best. Look at your benefits dashboards to see what teams specifically are engaging with the benefits on offer, and use this data to inform future decisions. For example, if there’s a particular team that isn’t engaging with the benefits, could you lead a managers session to equip leaders with the information to share in all-hands meetings? Are your employees accessing their benefits via desktop, or via their mobile? Could they use more education on how best to access their benefits and improve the take-up of these benefits, or is it worth switching to a provider that could offer a better mobile experience?

The big follow up question is, what can you do differently to increase usage in the areas where your usage is lowest?

3. Reinvest in what matters

Are your current benefits offering clues about what your employees really need? For instance, if you offer a wellbeing benefit that delivers resources on a variety of topics, you could spot trends to see where else you could invest in a valuable benefit, like virtual yoga classes if your mindfulness/stress resources are highly-visited, or a smoking cessation or addiction treatment programme if employees are seeking ways to quit or cut back.

An employee discounts programme could help you understand what your employees are spending their money on most, and help you customise your rewards programme to give them what they really want.

While looking at data can seem like a manual, laborious task, the right tools and technology can do the work for you, so data becomes your best friend. And when it comes to the employee experience, the more data, the better.

Challenge your assumptions and use data points to be more strategic when it comes to the employee benefits on offer. Always ask yourself, ‘what is the data telling me?’ and there you will find the best answers.

This article is provided by Reward Gateway.