Kavitha Sivasubramaniam: Looking beyond traditional pay and benefits

As our Total Reward Week, in association with Aon Employee Benefits, draws to a close, it is time to reflect on some of the trends and issues currently shaping this area of the benefits market.

There is no doubt that a clear and comprehensive reward strategy can have a significant positive impact on attracting and retaining staff, as well as on employee engagement and performance. However, organisations must look beyond traditional pay and benefits to initiatives such as flexible working in order to keep up with the changing times.

Employers are increasingly recognising the value of investing in this area, with the Chartered Institute for Personnel and Development (CIPD) and LCP’s Reward management survey, published in November 2018, revealing that 97% of the 568 managers polled are planning to either maintain or increase their total reward spend in 2019 and 2020.

According to the CIPD, one of the key drivers behind benefits decisions in 2019 is likely to be the wish to invest in employees due to concerns about the impact Brexit might have on financial wellbeing.

Organisations would also do well to benchmark their total reward strategy to ensure it remains fit for purpose, which might be tricky when looking beyond pay and benefits, as various components of the reward strategy are often owned by different people within the business. Selecting the right peer group for benchmarking and accessing data may also prove difficult, but the exercise will pay dividends when it comes to plugging gaps and shaping changes to a total reward strategy.

Whatever stage you are at and however you implement total reward strategies in your organisation, Total Reward Week was designed to help take this to the next level through exclusive insights and opinions uncovering best practice in this area. These included:

Kavitha Sivasubramaniam
Editor
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