Making reward and benefit technology inclusive for all employees
Inclusivity is being rightfully prioritised in many workplaces, with businesses placing a strong focus on ensuring that every employee feels valued, welcomed and respected. This sets the standard for creating and sustaining a happy, effective work environment, regardless of organisation or industry.
Wherever people are involved, inclusivity must be at the core of business practices, and naturally, this extends to the delivery of employee benefits and rewards technology tools.
What does an inclusive reward and benefit platform look like?
From a technological perspective, inclusivity means making sure every employee can access the platform, use it with ease, benefit from it fairly, and enjoy the same opportunities for recognition as others across the company. In short, no one misses out on their rewards and benefits.
Here are five tips to making your employee benefits platform inclusive to all:
1. Make it mobile-friendly
For many people, especially those in frontline or dispersed roles, regular access to a laptop isn’t part of their day-to-day. However, the reality is that many benefits and rewards schemes are designed with office-based workers in mind, often assuming that everyone has consistent access to a computer and/or has the time during their working hours to check their benefits and rewards scheme. This can leave deskless workers out of the loop regarding important information about their benefits and rewards.
Making your platform not only mobile-friendly but mobile-first helps ensure that everyone can access their benefits and rewards, wherever they are. It creates a more inclusive experience by removing practical barriers and making engagement from every employee a daily opportunity. This means that employees can access their benefits and rewards on the go and at a time that is convenient to them.
2. Offer a broad and flexible range of benefits
People are wonderfully different, with varied lifestyles, priorities, and responsibilities. This means what they value from a benefits scheme will naturally also vary. An inclusive platform recognises this by offering a wide range of benefits and allowing for a degree of choice and personalisation.
Whether it’s wellbeing support, discounts and offers, lifestyle perks, or reward & recognition options, giving employees the ability to access all and the flexibility to choose what suits them best ensures the platform feels relevant, meaningful, and genuinely valuable.
3. Consider geographical differences
For organisations with a global or distributed workforce, inclusivity also means thinking beyond just one location. Perhaps your organisation has a large number of workers based in a different continent. Your benefits and rewards platform needs to reflect that.
The currency of your rewards platform, for example, can influence how benefits are experienced by employees.
Offering rewards in different currencies or tailoring options to local markets helps ensure that all employees, regardless of where they are based, feel equally appreciated and have access to the same benefits as the rest of their global cohort.
4. Reward consistency is key
Another factor to consider is consistency – is your reward delivery process the same for all employees? Inclusion isn’t just about access or choice; it’s about ensuring everyone experiences rewards in a clear, fair and structured way.
When rewards vary without a clear rationale, rely on individual managers, or are delayed by manual processes, some employees naturally miss out. This can quickly undermine feelings of fairness and inclusion.
A strong benefits technology solution helps address this by introducing structure, with pre-defined reward values (perfect for ad-hoc rewards), clear permissions, automated real-time rewards and consistent workflows, ensuring recognition is delivered fairly and clearly across the business.
5. Listen to your employees
Perhaps the most important step of all is also the simplest. Listen to your people.
Even with the best intentions, no organisation will get everything right from the start. Creating an inclusive reward experience is something that evolves over time, and employee feedback plays a crucial role in shaping it.
There may subtle barriers to access that you may have overlooked or slight inconsistencies in the experience that is having an impact. Keeping communication lines open and actively asking for employee feedback helps ensure that your approach remains relevant and effective.
Supplied by REBA Associate Member, Boostworks
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