EXCLUSIVE: D Young and Co. adds benefits using NI savings

Law firm D Young and Co. has added a range of perks to its flexible benefits scheme funded by the employer’s national insurance (NI) savings gained from its pensions salary sacrifice arrangement.

The new benefits, suggested by the firm’s 180 staff through its annual employee survey, include financial education workshops, an employee discount scheme, health screening for family, and enhanced maternity benefits.

The workshops, provided by Thomsons Online Benefits, aim to engage staff with their pension in the run-up to D Young and Co.’s April 2014 auto-enrolment staging date.

Jennifer Mead, HR manager at D Young and Co., said: “The portal includes a pension modelling tool to chose investment funds. We have a default fund and we have a meeting each year to review that.

“Although we have this tool, not many people are using it, so we need to educate staff on using it and what they should be looking out for so they are better informed to make their own choices.”

The discount scheme, provided by Next Jump, is also used to reward staff for long service.

The firm already offers health screening, but it has widened the option so staff can include their family members, which is already an option for the private medical insurance (PMI) scheme, dental insurance scheme and health cash plan.

D Young has also enhanced its maternity benefits, though this addition is being paid for by the firm rather than through the savings generated by the salary sacrifice arrangement. Employees used to have two weeks on full pay followed by statutory maternity pay, but they will now have two weeks at full pay, then 90% of pay for four weeks, and then 50% of salary for another 10 weeks.

The new benefits, which were included in the firm’s second flexible benefits enrolment, were communicated in annual all-staff meetings, and followed up by emails and letters sent out to staff on maternity leave.

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