Policy and practice in employee benefits management

Policy and practice in employee benefits management
• An overwhelming majority of organisations say it is their policy to communicate about benefits provision to their employees, in most cases via the corporate intranet. However, around one in six report that their organisation does not communicate information about the benefits it provides to employees.
• Just one in ten employers segments their workers when communicating to them about employee benefits.
• Almost four in five organisations report that all aspects of reward, benefits and pension are easily accessible to employees, though one in five does not.
• Just a quarter of respondents say they assess the value they get from their expenditure on employee benefits provision.
• Less than half of organisations report that they use technology to better understand their workforce requirements.
• Less than half of organisations offer some degree of choice in benefits. When they offer choice, over two-thirds use an IT system either exclusively or in combination with a non-IT system.
• Half of the organisations responding to the survey say they operated a formal work–life balance policy and almost a fifth plan one in the next year.
• The more women there are in management, the more likely the organisation is to offer a formal work–life balance policy.
• Less than one in ten respondents have a formal employee financial well-being policy, although almost one in six plan to introduce one by May 2019.
• A small majority of organisations anticipate that the ageing population will have an impact on their HR practices over the next five years.
• Among our sample, the practice area anticipated to change the most to accommodate this trend is how work and jobs will be designed and hours organised. By contrast, pay systems and promotion mechanisms are seen as the least likely to change, although the detailed findings show significant variations by sector.
• The main internal drivers of benefit provision are to attract, recruit and retain the employees needed to support current and future business needs, followed by promoting work–life balance and supporting employee health and well-being.
• The most common external influences on the benefits package are legal and employment obligations and other employment rights legislation

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