All Opinion articles – Page 71
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OpinionClaire Evans: Designing and marketing an effective car salary sacrifice scheme
Making company cars available to all employees via a salary sacrifice scheme is a popular way for organisations to enhance benefits packages.Lease providers should offer their expertise and support to employers considering a salary sacrifice scheme at every stage of the process, from initial policy designs through to a campaign ...
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OpinionAndrew Kirby: Relationships are at the heart of future car schemes
During the economic downturn, one of the main attractions of a salary sacrifice car scheme from an employer’s perspective was its ability to help with recruiting, retaining, motivating and engaging employees at no cost to the business.Now the economy is growing and employment opportunities are increasing, the battle to recruit ...
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OpinionDavid Hosking: Dispelling key myths about salary sacrifice car schemes
Salary sacrifice car schemes are a tax-efficient way to offer staff a brand new, fully insured and maintained car as part of a flexible benefits package.Schemes are tax-compliantAt its most basic and simple level, a salary sacrifice car scheme allows employers to ‘pay’ their staff with a company car, with ...
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OpinionIvan Robertson: Data can innovate healthcare strategies
A report by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) on knowledge-based capital (data, software, processes, and so on), Supporting investment in knowledge capital, investment and innovation, published in October 2013, shows that business investment in these assets is growing at an even faster rate than investment in ...
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OpinionNeil Conway: Seasonal reward needs careful thought
At individual, group and organisational levels, there are good reasons to intensify the use of year-round incentive schemes, such as performance-related pay, merit pay and bonuses, at Christmas, due to increased trade and therefore increased organisational need for labour supply.Also, employees’ desire for money is heightened at Christmas and the ...
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OpinionJillian Naylor: Severe obesity and employers’ benefit offerings
As a nation, we are getting bigger: 24% of the population is currently obese [Statistics on obesity, physical activity and diet – England, 2014, Health and Social Care Information Centre, February 2014] and NHS costs for dealing with obesity are estimated at £5 billion a year [Reducing obesity and improving ...
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OpinionCary Cooper: Incentives can aid staff health support
The early years of the workplace wellbeing agenda has definitively settled that debate, no matter how often the bottom line benefits have to be reiterated in boardrooms across the world.But individual employees are not about to go rifling through the latest set of results as motivation for an exercise kick, ...
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OpinionJohn Pryor: Fleet funding models must suit employers' needs
Funding is bespoke to individual organisations and while tax changes can trigger a switch in funding routes so can alterations in an organisation’s status and attitude.These include, for example, its ability to borrow money and its own cash situation, its attitude to financial risk and its level of internal fleet ...
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OpinionKatherine Wilson: What would the ultimate care voucher look like?
It would be accessible, affordable and appropriate for working parents and carers.It would apply to childcare and care for a dependent adult, such as a partner, elderly parent, relative or close friend.It would be simple and flexible to use for emergency or back-up care, care search, information and advice services, ...
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OpinionSuzanne Tyrrell: What would the ultimate care voucher look like?
However, the new scheme only deals with childcare. What about carers of disabled adult or elderly family members?At present, there is no similar scheme to provide employees with other caring responsibilities with financial support. These are employees who may have had to reduce working hours or even leave employment in ...
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OpinionMichelle Cracknell: Making pensions attractive
Better education, less volatile investments and planning tools with personalised forecasts can all help employees make pensions a building block in their savings strategy.I am passionate about pensions because they can change people’s lives. The idea of saving to have the money to do the things you want to do ...
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OpinionAndy Major: What would the ultimate care voucher look like?
Clearly, childcare is a key consideration, and such a voucher should include every working parent as standard. But it should also list every employee who has an elderly dependant to worry about. As flexible working becomes more commonplace, what about people who need to work flexibly in order to perform ...
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OpinionDr Zofia Bajorek: How to make flex schemes succeed
Flexible benefits schemes are formalised systems enabling employees to vary their pay and benefits packages to satisfy their personal requirements.They are no longer regarded as a simple staff retention tool and it has been suggested that this may be connected to efforts to improve employee engagement towards specific business goals, ...
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OpinionJoe Gladstone: Why HR professionals need behavioural economics
Understanding what motivates employees is fundamental to what an HR professional does. Yet, for decades, they have used the same superficial frameworks to model ways that staff evaluate information and make decisions, ignoring decades of evolving scientific research.The recent surge of interest in behavioural economics , which draws insights from ...
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OpinionAshleigh Witcher: Protection of employees’ employment
For the past four years, I have worked for Serco, a large international services organisation, looking after its long-term absent employees. Serco has a group income protection (GIP) policy, which protects staff through illness and injury.In the world we live in today, with such amazing medicines and cures for some ...
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OpinionJo Broadbent: What equal pay legislation means for employers
From 1 October 2014, tribunals will have the power to require employers that lose an equal pay claim to complete an equal pay audit of their workforce.Employers will normally also be required to publish such audits on their website and draw the audit to the attention of staff. The new ...
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OpinionRicky D’Ash: The long road to pensions wind-up
Often there are deficits to make good, as well as the various fees to maintain the scheme from actuaries, consultants, trustees and pension lawyers. It is no wonder that employers want to remove these liabilities from their books as quickly as possible.I am currently involved in the wind-up of three ...
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OpinionBen Davis: Why is segmentation useful?
It is fairly obvious why the segmentation of a database of contacts can be a smart idea. In short, we are all different, and what motivates me might not motivate you.We also differ in lifestyle. If I was a pregnant woman, you might reasonably be expected to guess at some ...
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OpinionAdam Lambert: How employers can comply with holiday pay law
The European Court of Justice’s (ECJ) ruling in Lock v British Gas Trading Limited and others must be taken into account when calculating an employee’s entitlement to paid holiday.The case concerned an employee whose commission tended to be paid weeks or months after it was actually earned. As a consequence, ...
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OpinionJennifer Maxwell: Employers are legally bound to support staff with diabetes
The Equality Act 2010 offers protection to anyone with a disability as defined under the act. People with diabetes can be covered by this definition of disability.The Act places an obligation on employers to make reasonable adjustments to the workplace to enable staff with disabilities to continue in work and ...