Boosting employee engagement – helping HR get a better ROI on benefits

Robert Shore: Hello, and welcome to the Brightmine podcast, formerly known as the XpertHR podcast. Brightmine is a leading provider of people data, analytics and insight, offering employment law expertise, comprehensive HR resources and reward data to meet every HR and organisational challenge and opportunity. You can find us any time of the day or night at www.brightmine.com.

My name is Robert Shore, and today we’re going to be discussing ways for HR to boost employee engagement. To do this, I am delighted to be joined by Justine Woolf, director of consulting at Innecto Reward Consulting. Hello, Justine.

Justine Woolf: Hi, Robert.

Robert Shore: To begin with, can you tell us a little about your sort of day-to-day work? What does it involve, being director of consulting?

Justine Woolf: Absolutely. So, I work for Innecto. We are a reward consultancy, and we are actually part of a larger organisation, Personal Group, who are an A-listed insurer. But in my day-to-day job I’m working with clients across all different sectors to support them on different elements of their reward agenda. So it might be thinking about their reward strategy, putting in place new pay frameworks. Talking to a lot of clients at the moment about the journey towards pay transparency and pay equity. So things like that, basically.

Robert Shore: Okay. Sounds great. And of course, today you’re going to be offering us some tips and takeaways for HR to ensure a better ROI on benefits. So let’s begin at the beginning, though. The basis for our discussion is a recent survey on employee engagement with organisation benefit packages. Can you tell us a bit more about that survey?

Justine Woolf: Yeah. No, absolutely. So it all came about, every year in sort of January time, towards the end of January, Innecto run an event called “Pay Trends” for our clients. And at the event we talk about the trends that are upcoming for the year ahead, and we have roundtable conversations.

And I was talking to clients on my table about employee engagement and how hard they were finding it. Even though they had really great benefits packages, they were finding it really hard to engage their employees with that proposition. And it made me think, “Why is it so hard to engage employees?” and b) also, “What’s it potentially costing us?”

So we created a survey to look at what methods organisations are using to engage their employees, what things are effective, maybe things that aren’t as effective, and whether also organisations are measuring their return on investment for their benefits spend.

Robert Shore: What is the business case for employee benefits? Why do this?

Justine Woolf: Well, if you think about it commercially, organisations spend anything between £100 and £200 a month on each employee in terms of the benefits that they provide. And that comes from an organisation called Boundless. And we asked in the survey, “Why is it important that employees engage with the benefits that you offer?” And what employers told us was that they want employees to feel valued and cared for. And also, employees being engaged with their offer means that they’re getting it right, that they’re more likely to be able to attract and retain their employee workforce.

And there was a survey that was done by Willis Towers Watson that said 39% of employees would leave their employer for better benefits, even if there was no change to the salary. So getting benefits right can have a really important role in offering the best to your employees and an impact on your organisational success.

Robert Shore: So I mean, it’s obviously then that employers should care. But is that what the result of your surveys tell you? [0:04:29.7]

Justine Woolf: So, one of the really important stats — and it goes back to that really initial conversation that I had, so I wasn’t shocked about it — but over 80% of respondents said that at least half of their employees didn’t understand what they offered. And actually, that was slightly higher when we looked at manager populations. So it validated that initial review.

And it’s quite worrying then, if you’re…you know, you’ve got 80% of participants saying, “Over half of our employees don’t really understand what it is we offer.” And that is something that organisations have to take really seriously. ’Cause they’re not getting value for money. You know, they’re spending all this money on benefits and employees don’t understand them or they don’t know about them. So it’s like throwing money away.

Robert Shore: Why is that? What are the problems that cause this?

Justine Woolf: I think when we look at what stops engagement, most of the

things that participants in our survey said, but also this is validated through conversations we have with clients every day, it’s generally lack of awareness, inadequate publicity or information, and also the inadequate accessibility to the benefits that are being provided. So either people don’t know where to go to get the information or it’s all over the place and they don’t know how to navigate to find it.

You know, we get hundreds of emails every day, and when we think about the benefits that we offer our employees, typically organisations will tell you at recruitment and at induction, “This is the great deal that we have.” But unless you’re then reinforcing those messages or helping your employees find the information when they need it, they’ll just forget about it.

Robert Shore: What sort of practical steps should organisations be taking to remedy these issues?

Justine Woolf: So, it’s interesting. We asked employers what they did, so what channels they used to share information about benefits. And also which channels were most effective that they had found

So things like using the company intranet and all-staff emails and via managers were like the most common methods used to sort of share information. But the reality was the things that were most effective in raising awareness about benefits were doing things like face-to-face events. So running webinars or doing roadshows, or really training their managers to be able to explain to staff what they had. So those were the things.

We did, as a follow-up to the survey, we did a focus group in conjunction with Sheila from Brightmine, to talk about also what we found in our survey and also the survey that Brightmine ran on looking at benefits and allowances that UK employers provide. And in that focus group that we ran to explore some of these themes in a bit more detail, people definitely said where they had spent time talking to employees face-to-face, it definitely reinforced the messaging.

If you think about intranets, and depending on your company’s intranet, there’s often a lot of information and it’s really hard to navigate and find things. So that can…whilst it’s great to have it in one place, it’s often a bit of a hindrance.

The other thing that we found was that people who had benefits platforms, where they were able to do things like push notifications — so to send messages out directly to staff — that was a really good way of trying to reinforce messaging around benefits or draw attention to specific benefits via these sort of push notifications. Because you’re on your phone the whole time. So if you get these alerts you’re far more likely to go in and look at the deal and the package and all the specific benefits.

Robert Shore: Obviously platforms…well, I say “obviously”. Do platforms vary according to the nature of the workforce? You know, say with the split between office workers and frontline or deskless workers?

Justine Woolf: Absolutely. There’s lots of different platforms out there. Some are desktop-only, in terms of the way that they share the provision to employees. Others have mobile-enabled platforms. So I mentioned earlier on we’re part of Personal Group. So we have a platform called Hapi, and it was specifically designed to be both desktop- and also mobile-enabled because a lot of the employers that we serve have what we’d call “deskless employees”. They’re out and about in the field, either in warehousing or distribution or care or retail. They’re not going to go to a desk and look at a computer to see what benefits they’ve got. They want to be able to access it on their phone.

And platforms are great when they’re set up to meet the needs of your organisation. But there’s lots of organisations that have platforms where the benefits that you provide aren’t integrated. So it might be that you’ve got to go somewhere else to get your pension information and somewhere else to get your private medical information. So it makes it quite disparate. And if you’ve got lots of different log-ins it’s hard to remember what you’ve got and where you go to get it.

So where these things work really well is where they are all in one place, they’re enabled on your phone, and they have single sign-on. Because it means that you can go to your phone, you can click on your pension provider, it will take you straight through to them without having to remember all the different log-ins, and you get far more engagement with your organisation when you make it really accessible.

Robert Shore: And you mentioned face-to-face conversations being very effective. By “face-to-face” we mean sort of on Teams or over the internet as well?

Justine Woolf: Yeah. It’s different things again, because some organisations will do things, as I said, like they’ll do webinars or they’ll do roadshows. A lot of organisations will run benefits roadshows where they’ll get all the providers to come into one place at one point in time. We’ve found with Personal Group what we do is that we have engagement executives that go out and talk staff through the platform face-to-face. So that means our levels of engagement and activation with the platform are really, really high because someone has taken the time to sit down and talk to the employee about, “This is what you’ve got, this is how you use it, this is how you log in.” And often, I think, we just don’t have the time and resources in organisations to do that. So where you can leverage providers that can do that for you, you certainly will see a higher level of engagement and activation with your benefits.

Robert Shore: Well as you say, employers are spending this money anyway. Employees value it and it’s a reason for staying or for moving, so…but yeah, why not put in that effort as well? So tell us a bit about ROI, return on investment. First of all, how do you measure it? And I think you sort of mentioned a figure there for what organisations invest generally in benefits. Tell us a bit about that.

Justine Woolf: Return on investments have been a tricky one, because it does depend what data you can get. Typically organisations will measure things like benefits take-up, employee satisfaction, what they’re spending on benefits, the levels of awareness, or even things like maybe employee absence or sickness levels, to give a sense of, “Are the things that we’re offering giving us value for money?” And those individual metrics tell us part of the story but you also then need to overlay other things.

For example, just because employees don’t use benefits doesn’t mean they don’t value them. So what we often have to do is think about sort of overlaying lots of different lenses of data to really get to the nub of what it is we’re trying to see if we’re making a difference and having an impact.

Robert Shore: And when you say just because they don’t use them it doesn’t mean to say they don’t value them, can you just explain that? That sounds like a paradox to me.

Justine Woolf: So, life assurance…I’m not using it but I value the fact that I have it. And if you took it away, I would be upset potentially that I haven’t got that there. So there’s benefits that organisations will provide, like critical illness. Please God you never have to use it. But actually, I value it quite highly because it gives me comfort and reassurance that if something goes wrong I will be looked after or my dependants will be looked after. So there’s lots of different benefits that organisations will provide. Some you will hope that they use. So things like private medical if it means that they get back to work quicker. Others you hope you don’t have to use; they’re more of an insurance, if you like. But the value…just because someone doesn’t use it doesn’t mean it’s not valued. But we don’t always look at the value employees place on benefits when we’re making assessments about whether we’re getting return on investment.

Robert Shore: Some organisations don’t measure ROI, is that right? And if not, why not?

Justine Woolf: There’s a lot of organisations that don’t measure. About a third in our survey said they don’t measure it at all. And the reasons are often down to the lack of time, lack of resource to do the analysis. And also the other thing is actually getting hold of the data. If you don’t survey your employees to know whether they value your benefits or not, you’re not going to know. And often what happens is that, particularly HR teams, you’re busy doing day-to-day. You don’t always have that time to analyse your sickness absence and see if your employee assistance plan is getting people back to work quicker than might have if you didn’t have it. You know, is it reducing the amount of time that people take off with stress? So that sense of whether that spend is being effective. And it’s a bit chicken-and-egg really, because if you don’t have the time you can’t measure the outcomes. But if you don’t measure the outcomes, you can’t necessarily justify whether you’re spending money wisely.

But it’s generally down to lack of time and resource, and getting hold of the data that stops organisations, I think, based on my experience.

Robert Shore: You really need to make a business case for doing this properly. So how do you build a really good business case to ensure optimal results?

Justine Woolf: I think what you need to do, where you can, is lean on others.

So you know, we will all have benefit providers that we’re using. Get them to provide the information in terms of the usage and the stats and the spend. Often people will have benefits platforms or they’ll have, these providers will have some dashboards that you can access. And again, if you don’t have time to do it, get them to help you, to give you the insights. You know, Personal Group will do regular business reviews with our clients to show them, “This is how people are using the platform. This is how they’re using the benefits,” and so on. And good providers should be doing that. So that starts to give you information about what you’re spending, what the usage is. And that will start to build the picture.

But the other thing is – and I will say this ’cause obviously I’m a consultant – but that’s what consultants are there to do. You know, we help our clients to do the things that they don’t necessarily have the time, resource or expertise to do. And you know, we’ll often help our clients think about what are they providing in terms of the benefits, what are they spending, where are there maybe overlaps or gaps. And that can then help shape the strategy for investment if you do need to make changes. Or actually reduce what you’re spending.

Robert Shore: I think you were going to take us through a case study.

Justine Woolf: Well, it probably might just be useful to share one of the clients that we worked with. I can’t say who they are but they are an insurer that targets a certain demographic of the population. And we worked with them last year to review their benefits offer and see if we could find better ways to help them engage with their employees.

And what we found was that they’ve actually got a really brilliant benefits offer. But because it had been built up over time and layered up — particularly with Covid as well — we found that they had providers that were offering the same benefits.

So they were duplicating the effort in terms of they had providers giving, like, employee assistance programmes. They were paying for mental health, a mental health app that a separate provider was already giving them. So there was duplication in terms of some of the things that they were doing. So we helped them simplify and identify where they could streamline.

They also had some really brilliant, unique benefits that very much aligned with their proposition, for example giving their employees access. So they have insurance products that they sell but they weren’t necessarily giving their employees access to those products or telling them how they could access them. So you know, that aligns who they are and what they’re providing.

And then the other thing that we looked at doing was aligning their benefits with life events. So if you think about the way that a lot of organisations group their benefits together, they’ll have what we call “wellbeing pillars”. So they might have a financial wellbeing pillar that might incorporate pension or life assurance. They might have a physical wellbeing pillar that has gym membership. And then they might have a health wellbeing pillar that talks about, you know, maybe private medical and so on. And these are great. That’s a good way of segmenting your benefits.

But it you think about the way that we typically use benefits, it’s related very much to our day-to-day lives. So I’m moving house, or I’m having a child, or I’ve, God forbid, got cancer. How do I know what benefits that I can access? So actually grouping your benefits into life events can create more relevance for employees. So if I know I’m moving house and my company gives me a day off for moving house and they give me a discount on home insurance and maybe they also give me discounts on estate agents – I don’t know, whatever it is, the proposition – by grouping them by those sort of life events, it means that they’re more meaningful and more tangible at that point in time. But it’s easier for managers to help employees navigate those events. They’ll know if someone’s moving house or they’re having a child or they getting married or they’re retiring. So helping them think about “Well, this is how our company supports you through these different stages” can be really useful. So that’s one of the things that we explored with them.

Robert Shore: Great. Now we did, at the beginning, we said you were going to offer some takeaways and tips. So I think let’s begin with takeaways. What do we need to write down at this point or memorise?

Justine Woolf: Well, if you think about the things that I’ve talked about today, think about what proportion of your organisation are engaged, and understand, with your benefits. Think about what methods you’re using to engage those employees and where you think there are methods that are more successful and less successful. And think about how to leverage tech. Because we are all using tech. We’re on our phones every day. So if you haven’t got a benefits platform you’re potentially losing out on that ability to bring all of your benefits together in one easily accessible place.

So I would say those are the things you should be thinking about, and thinking about how do you collect that data to make sure that you are looking at the return on investment on your spend. You know, a lot of organisations will say, “I can’t afford a benefits platform.” But what are you spending on all of these benefits? What are you spending on losing employees on your turnover each time you have a failed recruitment? And actually, if you’re able to keep employees for longer, have them more engaged, you could get a better return and justify that investment.

Robert Shore: And do we have some tips?

Justine Woolf: Yeah, definitely. So I would say, simplify your communications where you can. Try to reach family members. This is one of the things that we do that works really well. So on our benefits platform we have retail discounts, and many organisations will offer retail discounts. But as well as offering it to the staff member, we offer it to family members as well. So if you’re not the person that goes and does the shopping but your partner is, actually giving them access means that they get to benefit from the provision that you’re providing – not just your employees but their wider family. So that works really well.

Robert Shore: So then, in that case you would say you actually contact those other people in the family directly?

Justine Woolf: Well, you don’t contact them directly but you give them the opportunity to sign up to access, through the platform, the discounts in this scenario. Having human interaction is really important to cut through that daily noise. So try to think about those opportunities to do face-to-face engagement around your benefits because it reinforces the messaging. It gets lost in words on emails, in intranets.

I think we touched on this before but recognising there are different audiences, depending on the demographic make-up of your organisation. And so whatever approach you have needs to recognise that you might have to tailor your messaging or the approach that you do to deliver your benefits.

Robert Shore: You say — there’s some euphemistic material there, isn’t there? Something about different demographics and audiences. Broadly what are we saying? That younger people are more likely to…? And these are generalisations, obviously. There are all sorts of people who defy that, but at the same time, what is the range?

Justine Woolf: Well, so we’re talking…when I talk about different demographics I’m talking about whether you’re office-based or remote, or out in the field, for one. It might be demographic in terms of age profile. People digest information in different ways. And again, there’s a huge generalisation about whether older people want more face-to-face contact than younger people who are more tech-savvy, depending on individuals. But I think don’t assume that everyone consumes information in the same way, is what I’m saying. So give people different opportunities to access information. So yes, make it digital but also make it face-to-face. Or have written content. Or posters, or whatever it is. Think about different ways to engage, different touchpoints.

And that takes me, I think, to my final point, which would be about planning 365 days of communications. Because you can’t just do things point-in-time. Going back to my point about life events, every day will be different for employees. So plan in communications about different benefits. There’s often things like awareness days or weeks that happen throughout the year. So companies will often promote certain benefits at those times. Maybe they have a window for enrolment, those kinds of things. But it’s just: don’t leave it to one point in the year or one point in the lifecycle when you join to just share that information. Make sure that you reinforce it continually, is what I would say.

Robert Shore: Justine, thank you so much for that. Some really brilliant insights, I think. And of course we have lots of supporting material on the Brightmine website, and I’ll put a link to those in the show notes. So that’s all we have time for today. Until next time.