When was the last time your business had a rethink of the benefits and reward you give your employees?
If you are like many of the smaller or medium-sized businesses I speak to, the chances are that the answer to this question will be “not very recently”. While HR policy and practice may be out of the top drawer, benefits and reward tends to suffer from an ad hoc approach and a lack of coherent strategy.
This is understandable. After all, few organisations – even significant mid-sized companies – can afford specialist benefits and reward manager; day-to-day issues occupy what is often the constrained capacity of any HR resource in the business. What’s more, smaller businesses which are growing successfully are likely to have a founder-owner who either has no experience of current best practice in benefits and reward.
This may be an approach which has served smaller and mid-sized businesses in the past but I think that organisations who have yet to rethink their approach to benefits and reward are missing a significant opportunity to achieve better engagement and performance from their people right now.
One compelling reason for this is that as inflation continues to erode the value of salaries, benefits and reward are increasingly the components in remuneration which can make the biggest difference to employees at the end of each month.
This doesn’t need to involve big new investment, it is more about reviewing what is available and what your employees need. Doing that will ensure you have a simple yet comprehensive set of benefits which includes salary sacrifice elements such as childcare vouchers and cycle to work schemes alongside access to an employee savings platform which delivers savings on retail and leisure spend.
Another reason to put an emphasis on reward and benefits is because, in my experience, the reward and recognition part of this mix which is meant to incentivise better performance from employees is often an element which is neglected and failing to do the right job in supporting the behaviours businesses need to really do well.
Ad hoc reward schemes – chocolates, flowers, bottles of wine or retail vouchers – may be in place but have fizzled out. Again, this is a question of standing back and looking at the results your business needs, what you have to spend and then organising a scheme with the support of your managers which consistently encourages and rewards your employees when they do well.
In smaller or mid-sized business, it can always seem like the core sales, finance and marketing activities which are the engine of the business are the ones which need most attention. But in my experience, taking time out to ensure the people who underpin those disciplines are incentivised, rewarded and supported in the right why is the first step in making sure they are achieving the potential of your people and your business.
Can your business afford not to do that in 2013?
Andy Philpott is sales and marketing director at Edenred – www.edenred.co.uk
Follow at @andy_philpott
