Now’s the time to revise and personalise employee benefits
by Charlie pitt, corporate consultant
Since the pandemic changed how many of us work, employee benefits have edged into the spotlight. And, as businesses wade through the recession, hunting for cost effective ways to show employees they’re valued, they’ll hold their place in centre stage.
That’s partly because pay rises are increasingly off the table. In private sector services companies, the median basic pay award is 2.2%, down 0.3 percentage points compared to a year ago. Almost half (46%) of pay awards are lower than a year ago and one award in every six is a pay freeze.
That’s according to the latest available data by XpertHR which collected details of 611 pay awards in private-sector-services firms in the 12 months to 31 August 2020, representing more than 1.35 million employees.
While plenty of businesses are in no position to be offering pay rises, non-wage-related compensations can be more cost effective, and existing employee benefits strategies can usually be improved. A good place to start is with personalisation.
There are five very good reasons to personalise benefits:
To make sure your people feel valued, seen and therefore more motivated
To make sure the benefits you’re offering have real value to the individual at their life stage, and therefore increase engagement with what's on offer
To cater to specific interests, offer variety and create excitement
To make sure you don't accidentally upset someone (offering childcare benefits to someone who doesn’t have or can't have children, for example)
To make sure people at different levels – in terms of seniority or tenure – don’t see benefits that they cannot yet access (but you can also let employees know what benefits they’ll unlock in the future to create excitement).