3-step method to prioritising your employees’ well-being

Prioritising employees’ well-being has been demonstrated to be especially crucial in recent years when it comes to attracting and retaining employees. In today’s hiring era where talent holds the upper hand for successful recruitment, employee benefits packages provided by the organisation ranks highly among the key decision factors that talents use to determine which company to join. Hence, companies are seeking innovative methods and ways to pivot their company towards building one that prioritises employees’ well-being to better position themselves amongst potential and current employees.

However, a concern faced by companies today is the rising cost of healthcare services that outpaces inflation. As such, any strategies adopted by companies should be well-accompanied by data-driven models for companies to implement the best and most cost-effective model for their employees.

Let’s look at some of the best approaches to establish an organisation that prioritises its employees’ well-being.

Firstly, understand employee needs

 Before making the leap to design or implement the perfect employee benefits plan, companies should first understand if their employees would appreciate or benefit from it. 71% of respondents identified that the biggest concern they have when providing employee benefits was the uncertainty of whether their employees would truly appreciate the benefits and whether it’s worth providing these benefits. As such, for employers to drive the most effective benefits packages without basing them on assumptions, they should prioritize gathering enough insight into their employees before acting on data-driven results.

This could come in the form of conducting regular employee benefits satisfaction surveys to understand which benefits are serving your workforce, a dedicated communication channel to discuss benefits-related topics or information, or a tracking system to understand the utilisation of employee benefits.

Secondly, the adoption of a flexi-benefits model

The current benefits landscape has evolved so much in the past decade that the past decade that the traditional model is no longer sustainable to meet employee demands. Often made up of a one-size-fits-all approach consisting of pre-aged benefits that do not account for unique employee needs, the traditional model often results in an unsatisfied workforce and disengages employees.

To accommodate varying employee needs, the adoption of a flexi-benefits model is often recommended due to its cost-effectiveness for the company. While reducing the upfront costs paid by companies for unused benefits, the flexi-benefits model allows employers to channel their employee budgets to pay-per-use services that their employees are more likely to utilise and benefit from.

Though companies within both markets (58% in Singapore and 70% in Malaysia) understand that a flexible benefits model is the best way to meet employees’ demands, multiple challenges exist when implementing plans that are customised to their employees’ unique needs. The survey highlighted the top 3 challenges faced when adopting a flexi-benefit model, which includes:

• Uncertainty of employees’ appreciation for a flexi-benefit model (71%)
• The difference in opinions amongst the organisation’s decision-makers (66%)
• Unaware of the available tools to implement the model (62%)

Keeping in mind the challenges mentioned above, the best approach to adopting a flexi-benefits model is to conduct a benefits sentiment analysis to have concrete evidence to investigate employees’ considerations, showcase relevant case studies to decision makers that show successful results when adopting the model, and finally keep an open mind when exploring new tools that helps elevate the administrative burden of implementing the model.

Lastly, reviewing of benefits usage from benefits providers

 Similar to other strategies that companies adopt, a key performance indicator is necessary to determine the success of a strategy. In the case of adopting a flex-benefit strategy, the review of usage data from past and current benefits providers offers a good understanding for companies to be aware of which benefits their employees are mostly using. A better understanding of benefits usage will enable companies to make better decisions when approaching the next steps. For instance, if most employees are found to make use of the optical benefits provided and fewer are using the dental benefits, companies will be able to increase their spending on optical benefits while decreasing spending on dental benefits. As such, this creates a cost-effective way to satisfy employees’ demands.

Overall, the future of the benefits landscape is an ever-transforming one. Organizations hoping to remain relevant and competitive when attracting and retaining talent should be open to adapting to the change in demands and prioritise their employees’ well-being to remain competitive.

Source: GWFM News