What's your value proposition?
What I find really strange is that if I was trying to sell what I do to a new client, I wouldn't focus on telling them what it costs me to have them as a client. I'd tell them about the value that I bring to their lives. How the basics of what we do are a given but it's the value adds that will make a real difference.
It's unlikely that my headline message to them would be "it costs me £X per hour to provide you with administration support, £Y per hour for every consultant and £Z to run the platform you use." Of course I need to know what X, Y and Z are so I can run a profitable business but I won't bang on about them to my clients at least once a year to make sure they know they cost me lots of money.
So why would we do the same with our employees?
Surely the number is subjective based on how much an employee places value on it? And if the perceived value is disproportionately higher than the actual value, you're winning.
Let me give you an example. A few weeks ago I was struggling with a running injury that wouldn't go away. Nothing serious; as it turned out it was an irritated nerve in my lower back that manifested itself as a tight hamstring. But it was bothering me. A lot. And anyone that knows me will know I wouldn't make it through a story without relating it back to running.
So on a Saturday morning at home I was able to access my benefits through my iPhone, read through the details of what our private healthcare scheme would cover me for and how I need to go about claiming.
Long story short, I called our healthcare provider and had an appointment for a physio on Tuesday of that week. A few weeks later, the pain is gone and I'm back to where I was before on the running.
My point is did I care at any point in that journey that my company paid £500, £800 or £1,000 of whatever the actual value is for my healthcare? Not at all. The value was in the ease of access through technology and then the speed at which I was fixed and back to full health. My employer gets no value out of me being able to run without pain, unless of course they understand the value I put on it.
The same goes for things like income protection or critical illness. It's not that £200 you pay for me to have it. It's the peace of mind I get from knowing my family will be ok and my mortgage will still be getting paid if anything happens.
Of course there's the happy side of the road as well. Being able to access childcare vouchers costs my company next to nothing, just the provider's administration fee. But if I'm a basic rate tax payer I could save £900 a year under current rules. Yet this benefit rarely makes it on to a TRS. Being able to play table tennis at lunch, flexible working hours, deck chairs outside in the summer, a drinks trolley that comes around the office on a Thursday afternoon. All things where there is either no value or a very small one on TRS, but to the individual it means a lot.
I was with a friend over the weekend who works on flexi time. As long as he is in the office between 10am and 4pm, he can do his 35 hours whenever he wants. So if he needs to do the school run, no problem. If he fancies finishing early one evening to go for a bike ride, nobody cares. I asked him "if you were looking for a new job, how much of a pay rise would you want to give that up?" £10,000. That would look good on a TRS.
So what's my point? Let's stop telling people what they cost us. We wouldn't do that facing outwards with our clients. So why do it facing internally to our people? A new approach is bringing to life what value you bring to their lives and why they would give up 35 hours every week to spend it with you and not another company. After all, we all know that our businesses are nothing without our people.
Andrew Drake is head of rewards and benefits consulting at JLT Employee Benefits.
This article was provided by JLT Employee Benefits.
In partnership with
