Employee Benefits, Workplace Culture
Make anything a benefit: put even more choice in the hands of your people
04-11-2024
Employee expectations of their experiences at work have been accelerating over the last few years, and HR and Reward leaders are under increasing pressure to deliver greater choice and flexibility when it comes to the benefits package. Indeed, 52% of employees say their expectations of their benefits package have increased just in the last 12 months. As a result of these soaring expectations, the role of the global reward director has expended across reward, wellbeing and benefits.
Employees are looking to their employers for support in all aspects of their lives
Amidst a backdrop of uncertainty caused by socio-political unrest, war, climate crisis, and inflation, employees are looking to their organisations for support in areas of their lives that would have previously been out of scope; from fitness advice to mental health support, and help navigating the cost-of-living crisis, people expect their employers to help them solve the challenges they’re facing.
Employees now trust their organisations more than any other source of information. In Benefex’s Evolution research, employers rated their employer as a more trusted source of information than independent consultants, financial services, the government, and the internet.
With employees looking for organisations that will genuinely make their lives better, the EVP has become increasingly important as a point of difference for employers to attract, engage and retain the very best people. With that in mind, organisations are looking to create the best experiences for every single employee – and benefits are a big part of this with 88% of employees saying the benefits a company offers can help them decide if an employer aligns with their values, and 64% stating the benefits provision is very important when choosing a new employer.
Employees are demanding greater choice in benefits
Employees’ growing expectations are centred around choice and flexibility – this has always been the number one way employees say that benefits provision could be improved.
Used to the hyper-personalised experiences they receive at home from the likes of Netflix, Spotify and Amazon, people expect the same level of personalisation at work. Employees want to be treated as individuals with their own unique needs and preferences.
But there’s a tension for organisations…
The current benefits ‘choice’ market includes flexible benefits that are administered through payroll, and discounts/perks that help employees stretch their salaries further.
Generally, when employers want to offer their people greater choice, they add more flexible benefits to their offering. However, there are three main challenges that come with this approach:
- There’s a significant overhead associated with adding new benefits to the scheme – relationships must be established with each provider, the provider must be integrated with the platform, and the new benefit must be communicated to employees. Many of the new benefits on offer are designed to serve particular groups so by their nature are going to have limited mass appeal.
- The process of continuously adding new benefits one at a time doesn’t deliver a rapid increase in choice for employees.
- If engagement with the new benefit is low, the effort and overhead for the organisation comes into question. Although the benefit could be very relevant to a small group of people, there tends to be a cut-off point at which the organisation decides whether the overhead is worthwhile.
The ultimate benefits flexibility and choice
Organisations are therefore trying to balance employees’ demands for more choice and flexibility with the need to reduce the admin, cost and resource involved in constantly adding new benefits to their programmes.
Acting on feedback from our customers – who wanted to be able to offer greater choice in benefits (reflecting the diversity in their organisations), reduce admin, and keep everything in one place – Benefex extended its benefits allowances offering. As well as existing modules for reimbursement/spending accounts within OneHub, Benefex now also offers card-based benefit allowances via OneHub Wallet.
While flexible benefits and discounts are still very valid, we see card-based allowances as a complementary category that sits between the two; used alongside benefits, Wallet is a way to really make your proposition stand out.
Allowances enable employers to treat employees as an audience of one because anything can become a benefit, within your rules. For example, employees can choose to spend their allowance on Netflix, hellofresh, food on Deliveroo, or a yoga class at a local studio – anywhere that accepts card payments.
The wellbeing use case is one that our customers are particularly excited about because employees have such unique needs and preferences; rather than just having access to a gym membership, employees can choose to spend on something that really matters to them such as local fitness classes, therapy, or even buy sports equipment.
OneHub Wallet can be easily tailored to specific people or specific use-cases (such as wellbeing, travel, or work-from-home setup), without any additional admin required.
Benefit allowances create emotional connections between organisations and their people
Behavioural economics tells us that we feel differently about money depending on how it’s given to us. If the money was given to employees as part of their paycheck, it would likely disappear into the pot that they use to pay for their regular expenses. However, OneHub Wallet helps organisations to create greater impact by keeping the funds separate from employees’ everyday spending.
The physical or virtual cards can be branded to create more of an emotional feeling when employees spend – something that they wouldn’t feel with other methods of administering an allowance like pay and claim methods (where employees are often unsure if their claim will be approved).
By making anything a benefit, Wallet can have a truly positive impact on people’s lives, health, families, minds, finances and futures.
To find out more about how benefits allowances enable the ultimate choice for employees, take a look at our report, Taking flexibility further.
Matt Macri-Waller
Founder and CEO, Benefex
04-11-2024
