29 Jun 2023

Single sign-on – why it’s good to put all your benefits in one place

Modern technology makes creating a benefits hub much easier – and helps improve employee engagement

A typical worker today has between 70 and 80 passwords to remember, up from just 6.5 in 2007, according to cybersecurity company Rackspace,

Add to that the need to regularly change passwords, and it’s hardly surprising that password resets make up a wearyingly large part of many IT help desks’ daily workload.

It also demonstrates why single sign-on (SSO) is becoming increasingly popular among both businesses and customers/users who need to access a range of linked services.

Not only does SSO increase employee productivity by reducing the time people spend signing on and dealing with passwords, it also makes password-related hacks less likely – especially when combined with a multi-factor authentication element such as a one-time password delivered to the user’s phone.

And when it comes to employee benefit engagement and adoption levels, SSO is one of the most effective tools because it allows employees to access everything they need quickly and easily, even when they’re in the field or are working from multiple devices.

Here’s how to use SSO to improve your benefits programme, enhance related communications, and ultimately raise take-up and engagement levels across your workforce.

Simple and inclusive

One of the keys to achieving high employee benefit engagement levels is to ensure the process involved in taking advantage of them is as smooth and simple as possible.

A reward hub will help ensure all employees can access the benefits available to them – from wellbeing apps to discount schemes – wherever they are based. This approach can boost employee engagement levels by 30%.

SSO is an important element of this as it reduces the time and effort required to access and learn about the benefits.

However, having a single reward hub doesn’t mean you need to invest in creating an all-inclusive platform of your own.

Thanks to the combined capabilities of SSO and application programming interfaces (APIs) – software that allows computer programmes to communicate with one another – it’s easy to give employees a seamless experience that gives them the illusion they are operating within a single reward hub even when multiple programmes are being used to present the range of benefits on offer.

Or, in other words, provide all the advantages of a centralised reward platform while retaining the freedom to cherry pick the benefits you want from a variety of providers.

Cross-pollination

According to the CIPD, 78% of employers now offer an employee assistance programme.

However, its recently commissioned YouGov survey of 2,557 employees found that just 57% said that their employer had told them about the benefits on offer.

Using an SSO enabled reward hub to house all your benefits will mean users will be able to see all the benefits available at a glance.

Combining all your employee benefits in one place also allows you to talk about multiple benefits under the umbrella of a wider theme, such as health and wellbeing – also known as cross-pollination.

And, last but not least, particularly during a cost-of-living crisis it makes it easier to highlight the availability of shorter-term offers, such as discounts on groceries and shopping, which are now offered by 68% of larger employers and 85% of very large organisations.

Added benefits

Other advantages of enabling colleagues to access all their employee benefits via an SSO hub include:

Greater control: centralising your benefits technology makes it easier to gather data insights you can use to enhance your proposition and create a superior employee experience without extra cost
Greater flexibility: employers can react to changes in employee situations quickly, for example by automatically offering employees who start a family access to child benefits
Greater homogenisation: for multi-national organisations, shared technology systems bring all regions on to the same page