Wellbeing benefits must be tailored to enhance inclusivity – Schroders’ Charlie Frost
Charlie Frost, Benefits and Wellbeing Manager at Schroders, highlighted the challenge of supporting employee sustainability.
Speaking at the Employee and wellbeing benefits that truly encourage inclusivity and belonging REBA webinar on 7 September 2023, said that what employees want from an employer has changed post-Covid-19. So now is a good time to reflect on what benefits you are offering to ensure that solutions have, and are, being developed to meet employee needs.
“That’s an area that we’ve been looking at in the past year or so. We’ve taken quite a reflective approach to speak to our people across the globe and liaise with business heads to say: What is it that we do right?, what is it that we could do better? and what do you want to see going forward?,” she said.
The organisation received positive feedback about its benefits programme, but much of the comment was around wanting to better understand what support to use and when.
“That’s where we’re tailoring what we’re doing,” said Frost. “Whether it’s supporting somebody through a life event that we’ve been looking at over the past year and have produced some tailored content pages for, or speaking to different populations within the business and educating them, not just around their health risks. But, if you are female, these are your health risks, and this is what you need to look out for. And this is support we’ve got for you.”
She added that, inevitably, there will be gaps and more tailoring would be needed to make it accessible to different people and to different populations.
“One of them that’s really kind of present in our wellbeing and inclusion strategy at the moment is around the neurodiverse, and how do we need to tailor the way we speak to that population to help them thrive,” she said.