The challenge - are we still a market leader on benefits?
The client had 90,000 employees within Head Office, retail stores and logistics/distribution centres. As an employer, they prided themselves on a market-leading benefits package but had not reviewed against market for a number of years. Whilst their benefit strategy was to be above-market on benefits they did not know if this was still true, and in the past 5-7 years benefit improvements had resulted in tactical rather than strategic benefit changes.
Generally, employee sentiment was positive about benefit engagement, but the data showed a low take-up rate across the benefit proposition, particularly within the voluntary benefit category. Benefit budgets were exceptionally generous but concern was expressed around "value for money" and "return on investment".
What Reward Heads did
- Worked in partnership with the Reward Senior Team to review and refresh the existing benefit strategy and principles to reflect the current business strategy and people proposition to reflect their unique culture
- Completed an in-depth market review of all benefits against median and upper quartile for different business segments – company funded, partially funded, voluntary and discounted services, plus all leave and family policies and recognition programmes
- Analysed existing benefit engagement feedback and completed focus group sessions to gain greater insight into employee benefit understanding and what employees valued most
- Provided the client with cost modelling with variables and parameters that could be used as "self-serve" tools by the client for future benefit improvements
