Before COVID-19, employee wellbeing could have easily been mistaken as merely a buzzword or an employer branding tool to attract and retain talent. Today, as a result of the pandemic, employee wellbeing can no longer be seen as a fad but an essential focus for every organization.
Most employers now recognize their responsibility to support the wellbeing of their employees. However, with this recognition comes the complication of understanding what wellbeing benefits you should offer your employees and what benefits are, indeed, helpful and supportive to every one of them.
So, how do international companies address employees’ needs, not only across offices but across borders? With multiple generations working together from multiple cultures, and each with different preferences and requirements depending on their life stage, is there such thing as one-size-fits-all when it comes to employee wellbeing?
Getting your benefits right
A recent article from Gallup shares that employers need to understand that wellbeing is comprised of five elements: career, social, financial, community, and physical. Each of these five elements impacts each other, and work affects every one of them.
When reviewing your current employee benefits offer, consider each of the five elements. How can you address each of these with your wellbeing benefits? For example, think about the following benefits and how they interact with the five elements outlined above: pensions and insurances; gym memberships and yoga; online counseling; grocery delivery services; smoking cessation programs; physical (team) activity challenges; discount massages; and homeworking equipment.
Of course, offering a wide selection of wellbeing benefits and administering them on an international scale has both geographical and logistical challenges. This is where adopting a global-but-local approach is essential.
One solution is to introduce a flexible benefits budget model where each employee is given a fixed budget from their employer to spend on a range of pre-selected wellbeing benefits. Using this model globally means offering employees in every country the same type of benefits but utilizing local suppliers in each country.
Managing your benefits right
When it comes to the administration of flexible benefit models as described above, implementing a global benefits management platform that enables local customization is essential.
With a global benefits platform, HR professionals can manage their employee wellbeing benefits in one place and get a clear and comprehensive global overview of the costs and spending, including supplier costs and prices, all in a single view.
A benefits platform also creates employee self-service, resulting in greater employee independence and reduced administration for HR. Enabling your employees to make their selections through their benefits platform allows them to customize their wellbeing benefits to suit their personal requirements.
The global recruitment company, Adecco, is an excellent example of a company that realized the importance of giving employees the flexibility to choose their own benefits and, at the same time, create greater employee self-service. Through their employee benefits platform, Adecco employees can make selections according to their needs. For example, in addition to the regular vacation days that employees are given, Adecco offers its employees in the Netherlands an additional 13 days a year. Employees can then choose to have those 13 days paid out in full, paid out in part, or take them as extra vacation days.
What employees really want
Want to know what today’s employees want from their employers?
We surveyed more than 5,000 employees from various industries and age groups throughout Europe to find out what benefits are most important to them, what benefits they would consider changing employers for, and what effect HR tech platforms have on benefits appreciation and the overall employee experience.
The results can be found in The Benefits and Engagement Report.
