Employers’ desire to improve employee engagement remains the key issue shaping benefits strategies in 2014.
Just under three-quarters (72%) of respondents to The Benefits Research 2014, which surveyed 256 respondents in March 2014, said the desire to improve staff engagement was the key issue shaping their organisation’s benefits package.
This issue first topped the list back in 2011, when 71% of respondents said this was the case, followed by 73% in 2012 and 74% in 2013.
But the desire to improve employee engagement levels has been near the top of employers’ benefits agendas for some time.
Over the past decade, some of the issues shaping employers’ benefits strategies have not changed.
In 2004, the inaugural Benefits Research found that the top issues shaping benefits strategies were the desire to improve the perceived value of the package, matching benefits to employees’ needs, aligning benefits to business strategy and making benefits more cost-effective.
Over the past decade, how we may have worded these issues may have changed slightly, but these reasons remain firmly on employers’ agendas.
Other issues shaping benefits strategies are aimed at achieving a specific goal and, as such, are more short-term priorities. As expected, this year, pensions auto-enrolment has begun to slip down employers’ list of priorities around their benefits strategies.
This is not surprising given that, as of 1 April 2014, all organisations with 50 employees or more will have been required to auto-enrol all eligible staff into a workplace pension scheme.
