Need to know:
- Employee networks can provide support for many areas of staff members’ lives.
- They can provide organisations with useful feedback on the current state of benefits and ideal future wants.
- Networks can offer employees a safe space to discuss issues, which can be redirected back to their employers.
Employee networks and resource groups are a common feature in many organisations. These typically provide support that covers working parents and carers, neurodiversity, disability, mental health and women’s health issues, among others.
These groups offer employees access to like-minded colleagues who share specific challenges and experiences that they can relate to, helping them to feel less alone and find support. This can also benefit employers by providing insights into what help different workforce demographics may need, shaping benefits strategies at the same time.
Networks represent lived experience and can explain in detail where work creates friction and where support breaks down, explains Gethin Nadin, chief innovation officer at Benifex.
“This turns benefits design from guesswork into something grounded in human reality,” he says. ”These groups become a rich source of qualitative insight that helps employers design benefits that genuinely fit the lives people are living.”
Typically employee-led, these groups are built around shared experiences or interests, providing an opportunity for connection, belonging and safety for marginalised groups. Networks can additionally review potential benefit providers, sit in on demonstrations and stress-test solutions before rollout. As well as being a channel for feedback, they can also highlight areas for improvement and the gap between intention and impact.
Ronni Zehavi, chief executive officer and co-founder of HiBob, cites an example of an employer offering learning allowances, only to hear through its networks that employees with caring responsibilities cannot use these because courses run outside working hours.
“The solution isn’t more budget, it’s protecting time to learn during the working day, removing the unspoken expectation to upskill in personal time,” he says. ”When employees see their experiences influencing decisions, benefits stop being a box-ticking exercise and start feeling relevant, practical and supportive.”
Phrasing questions for useful feedback
Making current benefits provision the starting point can be a good approach for employers to take. They can ask for employees’ experiences with what is already on offer and where this may have fallen short.
Employers may find that they receive better feedback from employee networks when asking questions that focus on impact and experiences as well as benefit preferences. Focusing on what support is hard to access could provide more useful insight than just asking what staff want.
“How questions are asked, and what happens next, matters,” says Zehavi. ”Open, judgement-free conversations build trust and make it safer to be honest. If employees see their feedback acknowledged and acted on, confidence grows. Over time, employee networks become trusted partners in shaping benefits that are practical, inclusive and grounded in real life.”
Direct questions exploring what would make employees’ experience better if it were implemented tomorrow, or what would have genuinely helped in certain situations can stop them from feeling overwhelmed by open-ended questions and enable employers to collect evidence.
Aubrey Blanche, ESG advisor at Culture Amp, says: “The key is to provide multiple ways to provide feedback that speak both to the ways people like to engage and to ensure staff can give feedback even when they perceive there is risk in doing so.”
Information from networks
After asking questions of employee networks and listening to their answers, employers should then understand what support staff do and do not find useful. They can identify gaps that may not appear in surveys, such as how personal circumstances affect employees’ focus, attendance and performance, and where stress, time pressure and hidden costs come from.
“Other examples include what employees are spending their own money on to cope; what support systems they already rely on outside work; and where work policies unintentionally create extra strain,” says Nadin. “They reveal the invisible load many employees carry that most organisations never properly see.”
Employee networks can also reveal how different groups experience workplace support and where confusion or unmet needs quietly exist. They can also highlight whether staff feel heard and if good intentions are translating into fair outcomes.
Organisations could collect sentiment data from employee networks through confidential or anonymous surveys to increase the likelihood of staff feeling comfortable sharing their authentic experiences.
“Once trust has been built, following up quantitative data collection with qualitative methods, such as interviews and focus groups, can more clearly enable employers to understand the experience of marginalised groups,” says Blanche.
Shaping effective benefits strategies
After gathering information from employee networks, employers can then understand not just what staff require, but why they need it and where pressure points are. This information can be used to address issues and help employers invest in benefits that improve experiences and long-term wellbeing.
“Insights help employers move from generic benefits to targeted, practical support that reduces friction, stress and financial pressure, which, in turn, improves retention, wellbeing and productivity,” says Nadin.
Organisations can also redirect their budgets towards support that reflects real needs, helping benefits to evolve alongside the workforce.
“When benefits are shaped this way, they become a clear signal that employers understand their employees and are willing to adapt,” says Zehavi.
Utilising employee networks to provide key information that employers may not otherwise have been able to glean, therefore, can help to shape and improve a benefits strategy for the future.
