Employee EngagementJuly 2015 | PayandBenefitsMagazine.co.uk ◆ 37

XXSpeed Read An HR director interviewing a prospective employee was recently asked: “I am a true millennial and I am curious to know why you think I’d want to work for your organisation?” Recruitment community Glassdoor is full of similar anecdotes. But what do these tell us about attracting and retaining talent? Captivating and communicating with workers is no longer just a “nice to have”, but a core aspect of corporate strategy. Welcome to the world of employee engagement.

Of course, creating a compelling work experience relies on a strong employer brand, stellar employee value proposition and “walking the talk”. Every element counts, so what part do benefits have to play?

In this feature, benefit providers and the frontline staff who manage employee benefits give their views and tips on designing, communicating and delivering attractive, original and sustainable employee packages.

The role of staff perks is strategic. It’s about talent retention, workforce management, and it’s also about making the organisation better. We look at which engagement-focused benefits are trending now and what the best companies of the future might be considering.

Captivated audienceEngaging staff is a critical part of many corporate strategies. Clare Jones

outlines how to communicate and captivate staff with employee benefits.

The recession curbed opportunities for people to change jobs, but now some markets are so competitive there has been a shift in power to the employee. But with the return

to mobility, it is clear that pay increases alone will not be enough to retain valued staff. Although career development is critical, particularly to millennials, employers should also consider the potential for benefits to give them the edge in attracting and retaining talent.

Reward strategyFor Matt Duffy, Head of Online Consultancy at Aon, employee benefits are a critical part of the overall reward strategy.

“In the ‘war on talent’ your employee value proposition (EVP) is what makes you different as an employer and is the route to attracting, retaining and growing employees. The EVP consists of the pay, career development and benefits on offer.”

Benef it s a re becom i ng a n essent ia l c o m p o n e n t o f a b r o a d e r w o r k f o r c e

management strategy. For the first time, four generat ions a re work i ng side by side in t he workplace. T he end of t he default retirement age and the growth in apprenticeships have left employers trying to balance a generation gap of up to 60 years between the oldest and youngest employees. This has implications for how benefits are communicated to staff.

“The role of benefits is hugely important in overall employee engagement as part of a total reward package, encompassing not just pay, but pension and additional voluntary benefits,” says Vicki Ellis, Senior Communicat ions Consultant at Capita Employee Benefits. “Employees want to feel looked after. In many cases they look to their employer to prov ide them not just with financial-based benefits, such as private medical or life insurance, but also those that have a focus on health and wellbeing, such as gym membership and cycle-to-work schemes.”

Employee demandsDuffy says there is a minimum standard benefits offering, which depends largely on the industry. A basic portfolio tends to include financial protection and pension, along with health and wellbeing support

Employee Engagement Employee EngagementJuly 2015 | PayandBenefitsMagazine.co.uk ◆ 3938 ◆ PayandBenefitsMagazine.co.uk | July 2015

Digital experienceOur everyday digital experience is starting to shape our expectations as “users” at work. As Sales outlines, in our personal lives the UX with technology is easy and attractive, and therefore engaging. However, it’s a contrast for many of us to then deal with clunky, unattractive, complicated HR and benefits systems at work. This has led his organisation to use gamification and character-driven storytelling to enhance benefits communications.

However, Duffy questions whether it is realistic for the workplace benefits UX to compete with brands that have access to millions of consumers who are willing to pay extra for the privilege.

Ellis and Duffy agree that online is the way forward, and we are now seeing a big shift to digital across the entire benefits sector making take-up simpler and more appealing. Apps and modellers, for example, are becoming the norm in terms of presenting information about benefits choices, particularly in the pensions world.

Sales says: “There’s widespread use of characters, video and gamification to make tools more fun, user-friendly and personalised.”

Simplicity is a facet of many engaging communications and Duffy points to the move towards a single c l ient-branded aggregated online benefits offering as a way of to increase engagement.

“This may have a single sign-on giving the appearance of integration, but in reality brand

wrappers sit above various platforms from which the data is sourced,” he says.

However, a small percentage of employees still want to read details from paper, and face-to-face classroom experiences can support communications on complex issues such as changes to pensions legislation. A multi-channel, seamless campaign is a tried-and-tested approach to maximum employee engagement.

So how can benefits deliver a social and timely experience? There are now digital benefits platforms available that have social features to drive engagement. People are influenced by what others are doing and saying, and peer group support is highly valued.

Leveraging dataThere’s a central role for leveraging data in benefits strategy to tailor the offering. As Ellis highlights, understanding your workforce using live data allows employers to chart benefit take-up rates because what is popular in the wider market also needs to work for your employees.

Data can also be used to drive detailed segmentation of communications. Remote workers, such as those on an oil rig, need benefits tools to be presented either online or by text message. It’s not just how people receive information but it is also when and how much people receive. Data provides logic triggers enabling targeted communications to individual employees. For example, a healthcare cash plan might be related to

sports-related physio for younger employees, whereas older employees might be more interested in health screening.

Engagement is also about dialogue. “If you want to keep your talent you have to listen to employees. Feedback has a role in refining the benefits strategy,” says Ellis. “The same tired approach year in, year out loses appeal and the offering needs to be continually developed.”

Finding the holy grailHR directors and reward professionals are under constant pressure to monitor and show a return on investment from the benefits they introduce. Equally, benefits need to deliver results that prove valuable to the employee and to talent in particular. It’s critical to ensure benefits strategy is integral to business objectives, the employee brand and the employee value proposition. Benefits that prove popular are likely to have involved dialogue with employees and be aligned with their behaviour. Ensuring benefits take-up involves making employees aware of what they are entitled to and making the offerings compelling.

The holy grail for benefits is when they help to increase employee engagement, advocacy, talent retention and business success.

Clare JonesMarketing DirectorLandscapewww.yourlandscape.co.uk

and an additional lifestyle element such as childcare vouchers or holiday trading.

Then there are the much-hyped benefits associated with Silicon Valley organisations such as Facebook, which is offering female employees $20,000 towards egg freezing. Continuing the theme, Virgin is offering some staff unlimited leave and China’s Tiens Group treated 6,400 of its 12,000 employees to a break in France. These unconventional benefits are the source of PR appeal as well as, perhaps, testimony to the sheer cost of talent acquisition in the tech and media sectors. Is there scope and demand for such quirky benefits to become mainstream?

Duffy explains that, in the past, employees have lacked information about benefits. However, coverage of pensions auto-enrolment (AE), changes to childcare legislation, and the green agenda has increased and moved from the trade press to mainstream consumer publications. As a result, savvy employees are more switched on about their options and want their employer to offer wider access to more benefits tailored to their demographic.

“Flexibility seems to be a key theme for employers and employees when it comes to benefits,” says Duffy. “However, there may be some conflict between what is commercial for the employer and engaging for the workforce. Across the board, holiday trading has become an established winner. Employees are particularly keen to buy extra leave and the offering is relatively easy for the employer to set up and manage.”

Future perksLooking to the future, wearable technology such as activity trackers, is a trend to follow, which links to the higher profile of health and wellbeing in the workplace, says Duffy. The focus is on prevention with offerings such as “virtual GPs”, which give staff access to a doctor on the internet, and novel approaches to engagement such as gamification, which is the use of game thinking and mechanics in non-game contexts, to engage users.

Financial education is an area of strong focus for forward-thinking employers. Indeed, since the pensions revolution financial advisers are reporting tales of employees being baffled about what they want to do and what they can do. There is an opportunity to engage employees through supporting them to manage their retirement.

“Clearly, you are not allowed to provide advice but a suite of tools exploring the entire retirement journey and the money management decisions needed along the route can clarify what is relevant for employees or what they may be entitled to,” says Ellis. “Employees are looking to employers to provide this.”

Enhancing engagement So how can employers ensure that their benefits enhance employee engagement? Is there a new, cost-effective way to design and deliver rewards programmes? Behavioural economics (BE) might have the answer. After all, AE was designed using BE principles to “nudge” people into saving. BE is the study

of emotional, social and cognitive factors that result in the decisions individuals make. The reality is that humans do not always act rationally when making choices. We are emotional beings, and we are not always financially motivated. Our unique circumstances have a bearing on how we interpret, respond and make selections.

However, in what way can BE make employers better at engaging staff with benefits programmes? Ryan Sales, Creative Director at Landscape, a behav ioural change communications agency, says his organisation is starting to apply BE to its approach to problem solving in designing the user-experience (UX) and data analytics. It is a technique that is already established in the public policy arena but is now gaining acceptance in the business world.

“The acid test is whether it helps to nudge the user into benefiting from using the communications intervention as well as the client’s perception of the success of the project. We are seeing some positive results,” says Sales.

Landscape applies the government ’s B e hav iou r a l I n sig ht s Tea m’s “E A ST ” f ramework as a pract ical sense-check at the brainstorming stage of benefits communications projects. This acronym stands for Easy, Attractive, Social and Timely. At a more detailed level, various BE nudges come into play to develop design and content features such as framing, anchoring, positioning and loss-aversion.