Some benefits are more valuable than others, and some can literally change employees’ lives, says Sam Lathey, CEO of financial wellbeing platform Bippit. But the most valuable benefits do not always get the take up they merit. Lathey outlines the reasons behind this and shares five ways to ensure these benefits get the attention they deserve.
There’s no uptake or engagement problem with fresh fruit as an employee benefit. The box is slap bang in the middle of the office, right on the kitchen counter, so it doesn’t take long to disappear. This is great, but fresh fruit in the office is hardly a life-transforming benefit. Meanwhile, many wellbeing benefits that can literally change employees’ lives are just not seeing the uptake and engagement they deserve. We need to solve this problem by raising the volume and by making sure we’re saying the right things, to the right people, at the right time.
Problem 1: Employees are drowning in a sea of noise
Modern employees are inundated – there’s email, Slack, Zoom calls, in-person meetings. Each channel has relevant messages, but a lot of noise as well. Gaining attention is harder than ever and, as organisations get bigger, communicating effectively gets much more difficult, as you can’t just ‘get everyone in a room.’
Benefits are often pushed down on the list of priorities when it comes to comms and, in some cases, relegated to footnotes on intranets or placed at the bottom of newsletters. This puts them at an automatic disadvantage and gives HR and benefits professionals a more difficult job as there’s often no consensus across a business that benefits are worthy of significant airtime.
Problem 2: Valuable benefits are seen as distinct from total compensation
Most benefits, even those with clear financial value to the employee, are treated as separate to total compensation from a communication and employee value proposition perspective, making it difficult for employees to see the value and difficult for organisations to communicate the value.
The impact of this is that the organisations bucket valuable benefits in a category of nice-to-have perks and don’t consider their success strategically, while the employee sees them as soft and squishy, opposed to the hard, tangible monetary value of salary and pension. This means they pay them less attention and it can be hard to communicate how valuable they can be.
Problem 3: We’re not prioritising the most valuable benefits
There’s a tendency to lump all benefits together and treat them as equals. In some ways this makes sense – you can’t expect everyone to love every benefit, and one person will fully engage with a benefit that others get little from. But it would be silly to argue that all benefits are created equally and, overall, this lumping together dilutes the potential impact of your best support. This is especially true if your communications calendar for employee benefits is limited, and you need to pack many different items into it.
Action plan for change: putting ‘benefits’ on the pedestal they deserve
1. Be bold when creating a benefits hierarchy
Some benefits are more valuable than others and we can’t ignore this. The best wellbeing benefits can change lives permanently for the better. You’ve done a good job of building the business case for these benefits and getting the budget signed off: now you need to back the efficacy. We should shout about the best benefits and demand space across comms channels because of the potential impact they can have on engagement and productivity.
2. Surface success stories
Nothing improves uptake like success stories from peers that show how valuable benefits are. Life-enhancing wellbeing benefits tend to build internal advocates very quickly, but these success stories can remain hidden unless you seek them out. Asking your managers or mental health champions to look for them may work best or you can do a general call-out to your people. Best-in-class vendors will be able to advise and guide this process to ensure it’s successful and, once you have the success stories, shout from the rooftops!
3. Help employees understand total compensation
Psychologically, employees put benefits into a less valuable ‘bucket’ than pay and pension, but we must overcome this. Many financial benefits have a direct monetary impact (such as health cash plans which can save you at least £500 a year). But because they’re not on payslips, they fall prey to this psychological trap. We need to start quantifying the value of benefits at pay reviews, on payslips, in our general comms and in total comp statements so employees see how well they’re looked after and what they can be missing if they’re not making the most of the benefits on offer.
4. Understand the lived experience of your people
No matter how loudly you shout, words are never effective when the audience doesn’t connect with them. Unfortunately, generic communications can fall into the trap of being so broad that they actually appeal to no-one. Solving this starts with understanding how to segment your workforce based on lived experience that’s relevant to your benefits. For example, men and women have very different needs and concerns when it comes to pensions, and we need to lean into these differences.
5. Get key stakeholders to be advocates
There can often be reluctance among leadership members to use benefits, which is a significant problem. HR and benefits teams need as much buy-in across their organisation as possible to increase impact but how can senior stakeholders appreciate this impact unless they use the benefit? Don’t underestimate the power that senior leaders have in driving uptake especially when it comes to normalising sensitive matters such as mental health support and financial guidance.
