Private medical insurance for employees’ partners and dependants and dental insurance are the most commonly offered benefits via a flexible benefits scheme, according to The Benefits Research 2014, which surveyed 256 respondents in March 2014.
These are followed closely by buying or selling holiday, health screening and critical illness insurance.
The top benefits offered to some or all staff are all long-standing favourites for employers to offer via flex.
Just over a quarter (26%) of respondents to this year’s research offer benefits via flex to all employees, while 8% do so for some staff.
Just 15% of respondents offered flex when the inaugural Benefits Research was published in 2004. The proportion offering benefits via flex has since increased, but it has not grown at the same rate as voluntary benefits schemes.
Increasingly, this may be due to the blurring of boundaries between core, voluntary and flexible benefits schemes, as employers move towards total reward programmes that provide a broader, increasingly flexible choice of benefits.
