Essential reward and benefits insights you can’t afford to miss
REBA Congress 2026 marked the release and expansion of several new reports examining the shifting pressures across reward, benefits, pensions and workforce health and how employers are adapting.
We’ve pulled together the headline messages from these reports to highlight the trends and challenges emerging across the research.
Developing sophisticated health and wellbeing strategies
REBA’s Health and Wellbeing Research 2026, together with AXA Health, highlights significant shifts in employer health and wellbeing strategies, driven by a move towards integrated and digitally-enabled solutions.
The report highlights how three major shifts, integrated health journeys, digital tools and specialised support services, are affecting workforce health and wellbeing strategies.
It details how integrated health journeys connect employers’ benefits and policies across prevention, early intervention, diagnosis, treatment, rehabilitation and ongoing wellbeing, creating a more coherent experience and better outcomes.
The report helps employers benchmark their health and wellbeing strategies, prioritise the most effective preventative health measures and discover the data most valued for measuring health and wellbeing ROI.
Pension communication challenges
Like Mind’s No Member Left Behind (2026) report reveals how workplace pension scheme members in the UK feel about their financial futures and what they need to turn pension complexity into understanding and action.
It found nearly that while nearly three quarters (72%) of members feel they understand their pension, just 53% feel confident planning their retirement.
Nearly half (48%) of members are either unsure or feel they are not on track for retirement.
The report argues that while the pension industry has focused on new products and legislation to tackle adequacy, engagement and outcomes, this has created an increasingly complex landscape that overlooks what members actually need.
It features a series of recommendations of how to make pensions communications more engaging, noting an opportunity for employers and schemes to better understand their membership so their communication approach can be tailored to meet them exactly where they are.
Going global without guard rails
With more UK companies becoming multinational by necessity, Howden’s Emerging Multinational Benefits Guide highlights a pivotal shift: the moment your workforce goes global, your benefits strategy becomes a material business risk.
The guide shows how rapid cross-border growth is leaving many small and mid‑sized organisations exposed, operating in countries where benefits compliance, admission rules and healthcare norms vary wildly.
It reframes multinational benefits as a growth enabler rather than a governance burden, highlighting the hidden risks of fragmented local arrangements and non‑admitted global policies.
It also sets out the essential questions every emerging multinational must answer to build a benefits strategy that is compliant, competitive, and capable of supporting talent.
Affordable access to healthcare for frontline and shift workers
The UK is facing an escalating yet often overlooked crisis among its frontline and deskless workforces, with rising rates of long-term sickness and health-related economic inactivity increasingly impacting employers.
Yet traditional employee benefits frameworks have been designed for corporate, office-based environments and often fail to account for the unique operational realities of those working on shop floors, delivery routes, and production lines.
REBA’s first report in the protecting frontline workers series, with Personal Group, explores how to design an affordable, inclusive benefits offering for frontline and shift workers.
Affordable access: Inclusive benefits for frontline and shift workers (2026) helps employers understand how benefits can break the absence cycle and expand health benefits while managing cost pressures.
The psychology of reward
Conversations on reward often focus on pay, bonuses and benefits.
However, Perkbox’s The Psychology Behind Reward (2026) explores why employers must look beyond the rewards they offer and think about how it’s delivered, supported and lived day to day.
The report states that getting the balance right between intrinsic and extrinsic reward, and recognising the influence of managers, wellbeing and trust, is central to building teams that feel motivated and committed.
Without it, organisations risk a workforce that performs but doesn’t thrive.
Prevention-led group income protection
With UK sickness absence at a 15-year high and presenteeism quietly draining productivity, the message from the government's Keep Britain Working review couldn't be clearer: workplace health is no longer just an HR issue, it's a mission-critical risk for your clients and the UK economy.
MetLife and YuLife’s The Prevention Advantage Guide (2026) looks at how Group Income Protection (GIP) is evolving from a financial safety net for when sickness strikes into a proactive model that helps stop sickness happening in the first place.
It draws on independent research from CIPD, ONS, The NHS, GRiD, and Deloitte, MetLife UK’s own claims and early intervention data.
The report features a four-point checklist for employers to review their current GIP at renewal and the ROI of prevention-led GIP.
To view more of the latest research, reports and guides from the reward and benefits sector, visit REBA's comprehensive library.
Supplied by REBA Associate Member, REBA
Supporting the reward and benefits community to pursue best practice and drive excellence in their strategies
