In this article, we share our four top tips to help you improve your employee benefits management approach and explore why you need a comprehensive, modern and flexible benefits platform.
How a modern employee benefits management platform can ease the admin burden
Your HR department is essential to your company's success. From overseeing recruitment and training to managing payroll and benefits, HR plays a vital role as the internal face of an organisation, keeping everything running smoothly and ensuring staff are happy and motivated in their jobs.
However, HR professionals are often time-poor and bogged down under the weight of admin. A study by Kienbaum Consulting found that HR professionals were spending a whopping 39% of their time on admin tasks. Many of you are buried under paperwork.
But it doesn’t have to be like that! Here are a couple of benefits your employee benefits management platform should be able to give you:
- Streamlining how you manage employee benefits with a one-stop-shop platform. You can claw back the time spent on manual data input, endless email communication and other mind-numbing benefits.
- By enhancing employee benefit engagement and accessibility, you’ll save even more time when you don’t have to constantly remind staff where to find and how to use their benefits — a significant issue when 35% of employees say their company doesn’t communicate benefits (or they don’t remember if they do).
Top tips for modernising and improving employee benefits management
Let’s explore four great ways to modernise and improve your employee benefits management to help you save time and prioritise your goals.
1. Go digital
One of the main responsibilities of an HR team is to strike a balance between the company’s organisational goals and the well-being of its employees. Naturally, this requires your team to be available to field questions and offer advice.
However, no HR team can be on call 24/7, and some employee concerns might slip through the cracks. If left unchecked, this could lead to decreased morale and productivity.
Luckily, an online benefits management system can help you plug those out-of-hours gaps and streamline your communication efforts during the working day. FlexGenius’ built-in communication tools let you publish news and announcements whenever you want, day or night. You can add graphics, links and video content to reinforce your messaging and drive visits to the portal with automated email notifications.
You can also group and categorise your employees to ensure only specified groups receive relevant and appropriate content if necessary (for example, highlighting initiatives to certain departments or reaching remote staff working in different time zones).
And with our survey feature, you can engage your employees and seek their feedback effortlessly. This can give you a clear and consistent insight into staff opinions and help you nurture a more inclusive environment.
2. Choose a system that lets you add all the benefits you need
The trouble with some employee benefits platforms is that they try to squeeze your business into their fixed set of features, with little room for manoeuvre. However, the modern workplace simply doesn’t lend itself to that level of inflexibility. There’s a clear focus on productivity, collaboration and technology, while the growing trends of hybrid working and work/life balance mean businesses can’t afford to be anchored to the past.
In other words, one size no longer fits all. Instead, you need an employee benefits platform that grows alongside your business and responds to your employees’ unique and ever-changing needs. Otherwise, those same employees will vote with their feet.
This is what Wienerberger, a leading supplier of wall, roof, and landscaping innovations, discovered when they looked to launch a flexible digital benefits platform to suit their diverse workforce. Due to a mix of roles (from production and distribution to office-based), access to employee benefits could no longer rely on corporate email addresses or a LAN intranet.
Working with FlexGenius, Wienerberger could select from and deliver a range of relevant features and benefits to their (majority offline) staff, including financial tools, lifestyle benefits, and healthcare plans. The result? A 70% engagement rate.
Learn more about the project in our Wienerberger success story.
3. Peer recognition is a cost-effective way to boost loyalty, morale and performance
Another often overlooked purpose of HR is to get the very best out of employees to help the company achieve its goals. As a result, you may be tasked with improving and maintaining employee morale and performance as part of your remit.
When employees feel recognised and rewarded for their hard work, they take pride in what they do, and they’re more likely to remain loyal and work hard to meet and exceed targets. That’s why many HR managers turn to rewards programmes to incentivise and celebrate employees.
However, 88% of HR managers we spoke to felt their previous reward programme underperformed due to poor delivery. Managing reward and recognition takes time, and it can be all too easy to lose sight of who deserves praise.
Moving your rewards programme online as part of an integrated employee benefits platform can save precious time and energy while ensuring employees get the recognition they deserve from management and colleagues.
FlexGenius’ reward and recognition module allows nominated managers to reward worthy employees. The reward amounts can be predetermined and linked to any criteria or corporate values. Staff can redeem their points using a selection of fulfilment channels.
And with peer-to-peer recognition, employees can thank one another for their hard work. Recognitions are visible to all employees and include a brief narrative, and a league table is maintained using a leaderboard to encourage friendly competition.
4. Find a partner you can work and grow with
The most significant part of modernising your approach to employee benefits management is working with a partner who can shape their solution to meet your needs. Every business and every workforce is different, which can throw up unique challenges for HR teams to overcome time and again.
As an employee benefits platform provider, FlexGenius can help you pick and choose the features and benefits you need to make the platform your own. We work with businesses of all shapes and sizes, from SMEs to multinational companies with 50 up to 10,000 employees — so we can scale to the size that works for you.
And with dedicated support, you won’t be left to fend for yourself once you go live. We’re on hand to help you refine your employee benefits packages moving forward. That’s why we have such a loyal customer base with an exceptional 95% retention rate.
Summary: Embrace the future of employee benefits with FlexGenius
To recap, the main cost of not optimising your employee benefits management is time. If you’re relying on separate platforms and providers to deliver health, finance, rewards and lifestyle benefits, you and your team will be pulled in several different directions at once.
As we’ve discovered, many HR professionals are spending around two-fifths of their time on admin tasks alone — and the more benefits platforms you have to manage, the more admin you’ll have to deal with.
FlexGenius helps you streamline your employee benefits management into one integrated platform. You can choose the features and benefits you offer your staff, completely tailored to your company’s culture and demographics.
The outcome is an all-in-one employee benefits platform designed to increase employee engagement, performance, and retention.
Unsure about the benefits you want to offer? Let us do the heavy lifting for you. Explore FlexGenius’ range of employee benefits solutions. Or why not book a free demo today?
Avantus does not provide tax or accounting advice. This material has been prepared for informational purposes only, and is not intended to provide, and should not be relied on for, tax or accounting advice. You should consult your own tax and accounting advisors before engaging in any scheme.
