Case study: The Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS)
RBS offers a flexible benefits scheme as part of a total reward offering. It believes the package plays an important part in engaging employees. Staff can spend their base salary, benefits funding (if they are entitled to any) and bonuses on a range of benefits. These include private medical cover, bikes for work, childcare vouchers and a range of voluntary discounts.
They can also buy and sell holiday. Trevor Blackman, head of reward, explains: “Where employees in the marketplace would be eligible for a car or private medical insurance at managerial level then they get given 10% of their base salary [towards their benefit allowance]. Non-managerial staff use money from their monthly earnings to purchase things.”
The organisation carries out an annual employee opinion survey, which goes out to its 135,000 strong workforce and has a 86% participation rate. It is used, among other things, to measure the impact of various workplace factors on employee engagement. “Our data shows that [reward] is the third most important driver.
Ahead of that lies performance management at number one and leadership at number two. That is entirely consistent with all external data - it is nothing special about RBS. What it is though, is an important number three, so getting the design right is very important,” explains Blackman.
