7 tips to ensure a benefits strategy is futureproof
A key part of this exercise is evaluating benefit take-up. By gaining insight into how your benefits package is perceived by employees, you can see what works, what needs attention and where there are any potential gaps.
But, before you reach for your spreadsheet and calculator, these tips will help you use this insight to create an employee benefits package that’s fit for the future.
1) What’s your problem?
First, think about what you’re trying to fix. For instance, if your organisation has a high absence rate, you might want to focus on evaluating take-up on any health benefits. This will show you whether you need to promote these more and/or add additional products to help employees look after their health.
Also, be mindful of how the demographics of your workforce might influence your findings. If you’re hellbent on driving up employee engagement with the pension, look at employees’ salaries before stepping up your activity. If a large proportion earn less than £25,000, a workplace pension might not be a large part of their retirement income. Similarly, if debt levels are high, pushing the pension might not be the best option for employees.
2) Check out your business plan
It’s sensible to keep an eye on the future when looking at this data, especially with regards to your organisation’s long-term business plan.
Businesses evolve rapidly, many may be unrecognisable from where they were just five years ago. As an example, take a bank. Five years ago, one of the recruitment priorities was attracting part-timers to staff the branches: today, with online banking becoming the norm, banks are much more likely to be looking for tech savvy recruits, who may come with very different benefit expectations.
3) Study the macro-economics
It’s also worth paying attention to the broader economic picture. Factors such as the Office for Budget Responsibility’s expectation of 600,000 more jobs by 2023; the UK’s falling birth rate; and a reduction in immigration following Brexit, all point to a tight labour market.
Similarly, the UK’s ageing population points to more people choosing to stay in work beyond state pension age, but also more employees finding themselves caring for elderly relatives.
Reflecting these trends in your employee benefits will help to keep you ahead of the recruitment and retention curve.
4) Make your communications count
Your benefits take-up data might leave you feeling there’s room for improvement but suppress the urge to simply dash out the same communications more frequently. Think of your benefits package as a product, with your employees the customers and yourself the marketing professional. Understand the different segments across the workforce and finetune your communications to appeal to them.
The best communications are simple and frequent so use your take-up evaluation exercise to track whether you’re hitting the spot.
5) Check out the competition
Also think about how your benefits package stacks up against the competition. By benchmarking your offering against those of your peers you can see whether there are any obvious gaps that could be pushing up staff turnover.
But remember: while it’s good to check out the competition, don’t blindly follow them. Their business could be headed in a completely different direction to yours.
6) Keep it legal
A futureproofing exercise should also take potential changes in legislation and regulation into account. It’s not always easy to know what future costs you might be expected to meet – with everything from higher pension contributions and more health and wellbeing benefits to a contribution towards social care insurance all possibilities – but it is sensible to bear these potential costs in mind before splashing the budget on fancy benefits.
7) Be flexible
Remember too that futureproofing your benefits doesn’t mean setting them in stone for the next 20 years. Things change so make sure your strategy has plenty of wriggle room so you can respond to the unexpected. Some of the employee benefits of tomorrow haven’t even been invented yet.
The author is Richard Morgan, Strategic Consulting Consultant at Aon.
This article is provided by Aon.
