Employee benefits are now expected to do much more than just reward. However, in many organisations, employee benefits are still deployed passively without clear objectives, and in these situations, the benefits can become extremely difficult for HR to justify, according to Jelf Employee Benefits.
Iain Laws, director of UK healthcare, Jelf Employee Benefits says: “The future of healthcare employee benefits requires a dynamic approach and, even more crucially, an approach that is measurable via key performance indicators (KPIs) or a return on investment (ROI). Without this in place, companies will find they are still paying for the ill health of their employees rather than moving towards the model of preventing ill health.”
Jelf Employee Benefits endorses the use of absence data – the most commonly used KPI for all employee benefit healthcare spend – as a sensible place to start: reducing the amount of time taken off due to sickness is usually a key goal of a health strategy. Implementing a low-cost, data-rich, absence system can provide all the measurement information a company needs.
Laws continued: “Absence software no longer requires an in-depth implementation process, so is much more accessible, and will enable HR and the wider business to be more proactive with the engagement of supporting resources.”
Once an organisation’s absence management data is robust, objectives can be set for each individual benefit and the current provision reviewed. Only then can a company begin to proactively promote the benefits of PMI, income protection, cash plans, dental insurance or EAPs to its employees – in the knowledge that the correct messages will be communicated to the most appropriate employee audiences. Once these measures are in place, companies can start to deliver a positive ROI.
Laws concluded: “In these challenging times every inch of every organisation is coming under scrutiny from finance. If HR and benefits are to avoid the scissors, they need to be more commercially aware and demonstrate the value they add to an organisation via real quantitative measures.”
