How To Offer Benefits That Lead To Increased Engagement and Satisfaction
Since the 2000s, employee engagement has become one of the most talked-about topics in workplaces all over the world. In fact, today, it’s impossible to talk about HR, recruitment, culture, and workplace satisfaction without talking about employee engagement.
Why is employee engagement so critical? It’s simple — employees who are engaged in their work are more productive and more motivated.
Organizations with highly engaged employees enjoy increased profitability, while employees, themselves, are more likely to remain with their current employer.
Leading organizations understand how employee benefits contribute to engagement and satisfaction. But how do you know what benefits employees actually want?
It’s Not Just About The Money
Feeling valued and appreciated, using our strengths, finding meaning in what we do, being aligned with the company values, and feeling part of the culture all play a crucial role in employee engagement and work satisfaction.
Let’s be honest — compensation is also very important. What employee doesn’t want to be compensated well for their efforts? However, when talking about compensation, it’s important that salary is not the only thing that’s discussed.
Employees who only look at their salary instead of their total reward, including employee benefits, workplace benefits, pension, and insurances, undervalue their total compensation and are likely to be missing out on a significant part of their compensation package.
In a 2018 SHRM survey on job satisfaction and engagement, 92% of employees said that benefits are important to their overall job satisfaction.
Make Benefits Personal
In every workplace across the globe, we can see multiple generations working side by side. Each generation has its own needs and preferences depending on life stage and other factors. This is why a company’s employee benefits offering needs to be personalized.
How can employers personalize their employee benefits offering? One way is through a flexible benefits plan. Created by the employer, a flexible benefits plan allows employees to select from a variety of pre-tax offerings to create a customized benefits package that matches their needs.
Flexibility and customization can be in many shapes or forms. For example, in addition to regular vacation days, Adecco offers its employees in the Netherlands an additional thirteen days a year, which employees can choose to have paid out in full, paid out in part, or take as vacation days. Their benefits administration system then automatically calculates what the pay-out amount will be based on the employee’s selection.
Make Sure Benefits Support the Whole Person
While being engaged in our work is important, we also need time for the other things outside of work that energize us and make us whole.
In addition to offering employee benefits that support work-life balance, allowing employees to adjust their schedules, work from home when needed is another way that employers can support the whole person. Flexitime is generally regarded as one of the most universally appreciated benefits.
Remove the Guesswork — Use Data
Why try to guess what benefits your employees want, when you can access data to tell you exactly what benefits are being used? For example, through Benify’s Global Intelligence Dashboard, administrators can get an overview of which benefits employees are enrolled in, which benefits are being used, and which benefits are most popular.
With access to such data, employers can better understand their employees’ needs and wants.
Awareness Leads To Appreciation
As attractive as a company’s employee benefits offering might be, unfortunately, they aren’t worth much if employees are unaware of them.
This is where communication is vital. Notifying and reminding employees of their benefits through emails, text messages, push notifications or in-portal messages helps increase awareness and appreciation of benefits as well as enrolment into new benefits. It’s important that you reach your employees wherever they are and via their preferred communication channel.
L’Oréal is one company that was able to create greater awareness around employee benefits and total compensation. Martina Heim, Total Rewards Director at L’Oréal, explains: “We wanted to find a way to better visualize and manage our various company rewards programs. We wanted to empower our employees and ensure that each employee had a sound understanding of their available benefits and rewards in a way that was easy to access and engage with. We were able to achieve this through the special technology Benify developed, including their app.”
