Improving pensions engagement: what’s HR’s role in 2018?
One of the growing areas of concern for HR professionals is how financially prepared their employees are for retirement. Typically, lack of employee interest in pensions and savings is a major challenge. HRs face a fresh hurdle this year as the minimum contribution required for qualified schemes s rising from 6 April – a move […]
Benefits uptake: are you doing enough?
Providing employee benefits serves many purposes for organisations including motivation, retention and recruitment of staff. They’re also an important part of building an employee centric culture, where staff feel valued and looked after. There’s plenty of evidence that they matter a great deal to staff too. Research by CV Library shows that 62% of employees […]
Family friendly benefits under threat from new gender pay rules
Despite new rules propelling the gender pay gap into the spotlight, Sodexo Engage’s Iain McMath believes employers must continue to fly the flag for family-friendly benefits to help working parents. The countdown is on; by April, businesses with 250 or more employees will have to publish their gender pay gap in a move that’s likely […]
Pensions communications: change the what, not the how
How can we improve our organisation’s pension communication? The aim of this article is not about making a case for better pension communication. That shouldn’t be difficult. Put simply, from an employer perspective, poor pension communication will make it less likely that members will understand their company’s pension offering. And without understanding, it is unlikely […]
Pensions communication: helping employees differentiate between DC and DB
Pension promises have changed over the last few years. Not many employees are still building up a guaranteed benefit based on a fraction of their salary multiplied by years of service – known as a defined benefit (‘DB’) pension. Most new employees are now automatically enrolled into workplace pension schemes that offer defined contribution (‘DC’) […]
Benefits take-up – the why of getting it right
The employee benefits market in the UK is highly developed. Employees have been getting support with living and welfare costs from their employers since the 1950s and I don’t see it changing. Increasingly, benefits are supplementing or replacing State support which is the most significant macro change in the landscape in recent years. Employee engagement, […]
How and why wellbeing proactivity pays
A proactive approach to employee wellbeing shouldn’t just be for the privileged few, says Courtney Marsh, Commercial Director of Health Shield. No matter the size of your company or budget, it can be a reality for all. Everyone’s talking about wellbeing these days. Yet how many employers are still paying lip-service to it? And how […]
Workplace benefits uptake: map employee lifecycles to benefits
The employee lifecycle typically encompasses attraction and recruitment, onboarding, development, retention and separation – when the employee leaves the organisation. Mapping benefits to employee lifecycles is key to driving uptake, layering on top of that a strategy to match the right benefits to your workforce demographic. But, aside from high profile Silicon Valley tech giants, […]
Employee benefits uptake: why less choice is more
The benefits industry has long held to the mantra that offering more employee choice is the way to deliver better benefits but there’s not much evidence that this, on its own, is the lead factor is employee satisfaction. So it’s worth digging a little deeper and seeing whether choice is always the best thing to […]
Employee benefit uptake: 4 thoughts to better results
It’s February. The “New year, new me” phase is all but a distant memory and fewer and fewer employees are making full use of the onsite staff gym. The free fruit initiative is beginning to ferment and grow fur. Uptake on the EAP is dwindling by the day despite increasing absence figures. Employee benefits are […]
Beyond employee benefits: How to create a culture that sticks
Company culture is a tricky thing. We all agree on its importance yet nobody knows exactly how to cultivate it or even whether it should be cultivated? Should we just let it emerge and develop? Probably not. Developing a clear and consistent company culture is a crucial – and ongoing – task that every business […]
How to build and maintain an effective wellbeing strategy
You will no doubt be familiar with the saying “build it and they will come”. This can work, but in most cases, unless you’ve luckily hit upon a genius solution to a major need (including a need we didn’t know we had – such as the smartphone), it won’t. The simple reason for this is […]
Seven employee benefits that help build resilience
There’s an interesting relationship between stress and productivity. A little stress at work can actually do us good – helping us focus and prepare the body for action. But it can also lead to mistakes, cause difficulty when making decisions and impact our ability to concentrate. There are also physical side effects of stress – […]
Pensions: Is your best and most costly employee benefit your least appreciated?
The government’s recent review of auto-enrolment found that 12 million workers are not placing enough importance on saving for their pensions. When it comes to engagement analysis, the government’s review was particularly enlightening, offering guidance covering ways in which employers can refocus pension engagement strategies to encourage a higher level of adoption and lower level of drop […]
Why creating a culture of kindness and gratitude is more important than a discounted gym membership
We have all seen health and wellbeing programmes that just tick a box and do the same old thing, such as money off gym membership, EAP programmes and maybe an onsite massage. But there is so much more workplaces could do to have a real benefit for employees. Happy, engaged employees perform better and have […]
Your employees’ money worries are your business
Employers are recognising the link between a healthy workforce and staff productivity. They’re also prioritising the mental health of their employees for the same reasons – it makes good business sense. But beyond health and mental wellness, the financial wellness of employees also has business consequences. According to a recent study, financial stress costs the […]
Why HR can’t rely on best practice anymore – part 1
We’ve seen for years now that what makes HR work in our current and future roles is the ability to be commercial, stay curious and be bold in following these things through. However, how many of us can actually say that we do this? There are some shining pockets of practice, but for the most […]
5 proven ways to increase benefits take-up among employees
Companies make a significant investment into employee benefits. While employers may hope to achieve different outcomes from offering benefits, the truth is, benefit packages contribute to big business goals. From attracting and retaining talent, to motivating and engaging employees and increasing workforce productivity, getting a strong return on investment should be a top priority for […]
Employee benefits: the impact of salary sacrifice changes on cycle-to-work schemes
Last November, in his Autumn Statement, Philip Hammond announced that so-called “salary sacrifice” schemes were to be significantly trimmed back. The chancellor called them “unfair,” because they allowed some employees to end up paying much less tax on benefits in kind – those that are given on top of a salary – than others. For […]
Working twice as hard to get half as far: the truth behind differential payoffs and penalties
There’s so much rich insight coming out of the academic sector that HR professionals need to know. At Academics’ Corner we feature the best HR researchers that tell you what they’ve found and what you need to do differently on the back of the research. Get connected to the academic sector through Academics’ Corner and […]