Flexible Benefits
Is your organisation ready for flexible benefits?
Increasingly, employees expect flexibility in all aspects of their working life. Many organisations now believe that offering a flexible benefits scheme allowing staff to tailor their remuneration package to suit their lifestyles is key to improving recruitment and retention.
Despite the consensus that flexible benefits are a powerful business tool, how do you know whether your organisation is fully prepared and ready to make the transition from rhetoric to reality?
The first step towards answering this question is to conduct a feasibility study which will help to identify the business benefits of implementing such an employee initiative.
Conducting a feasibility study
All companies implement flexible benefits for their own unique reasons. These typically include objectives such as offering flexibility and choice over benefits received, enhancing benefit offering, communicating employees' true total reward package value, aiding recruitment and retention, achieving better control over benefit admin costs and emphasising the company's values.
The overarching aims of a feasibility review are to:
- Gauge the appetite of the employees
- Engage the key stakeholders and gain buy-in/opinion
- Evaluate the risks, costs and benefits
- Identify whether or not the scheme would be cost neutral
- Evaluate the impact on HR policies
- Determine the possible high level design
- Identify a draft implementation plan
- Allow time for contingency building
- Limit spend prior to full commitment of resources
Below is an illustration of Ceridian's model for assessing the business case for flexible benefits:
The outer box represents the 'performance indicators' of which there are four types. Risk controls concern the people resources available for implementing flexible benefits, the timescales in which to roll it out and finally the costs of doing so.
Engagement level is the employees' appetite for flex - do employees want to have flexibility in their benefits and would they like additional benefits? Would they change the types and levels of benefits they receive if offered that flexibility? Would take-up rates differ if it was an online enrolment or a paper enrolment?
Admin efficiency looks at how capable the current IT systems and other integrated HR systems would be in handling flex. Recognition systems are about defining how well employees value their current benefits package and how big the difference would be if flex was introduced.
The Stakeholders box depicts the four key stakeholders in flex: HR, IT, line managers and employees and their families. A flex scheme is only successful if all four groups are brought into the scheme.
The inner red box represents the four key contributing factors to making a decision on whether to go ahead with flex. Firstly, Components, which comprises of the actual benefits themselves. Secondly, Implementation - how easy and realistic would it be to introduce flex? Thirdly, Strategy - where would flex fit into your organisation's reward strategy; would other reward structures have to be changed as a result of flex? And lastly, Profiles - are there various demographic groups in your organisation and if so would their different benefit requirements be catered for?
A feasibility review can be undertaken for the whole company or for population groups within it that are statistically valid to generalise from for the complete employee population. We generally recommend a whole company approach in order to build realistic generalisations and conclusions about the appetite for flex within the organisation.
Only when a feasibility study has been completed will you know whether introducing a flexible benefits solution will bring real value to your business.
Contact Ceridian for more advice or information on our Flexible Benefits scheme.
Printer-friendly format
Bookmark this page
Del.icio.us
Digg
Newsvine
Reddit
Technorati
Google
Ceridian provides this information to its customers and friends for general information
purposes only. This information should not be construed as Ceridian providing legal, tax or other advice
to any specific individual or organisation. Please consult your appropriate adviser for specific advice.
© Copyright
2008 Ceridian Corporation - All rights reserved
