All articles by Tom Washington – Page 10
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Article
Employers to review pension scheme ahead of 2012 reforms
More than half of employers are set to review their pension arrangements ahead of the introduction of auto-enrolment and personal accounts in 2012.Research by the Association of Consulting Actuaries' (ACA) reveals that 59% of organisations plan to do a review, including 86% of smaller employers with 249 staff or fewer.Under ...
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Article
Projectlink Motivation enhances reward platform
Projectlink Motivation has enhanced its reward platform and is launching a new online shop for the festive period.The Incentive Shop reward platform has a range of improved features that will allow employers greater customisation.Employers can now add their logos, choose a scheme name for their reward programme and change the ...
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Article
Personal accounts will not protect workers in retirement
The government will fail to protect millions of Britons from poverty in old age unless it makes vital changes to the way in which it plans to introduce personal accounts, according to The Royal Society of Arts (RSA).The RSA said in its report Pensions for the people: addressing the investment ...
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Article
NAPF launches Pension Quality Mark
The National Association of Pension Funds (NAPF) has today launched the Pension Quality Mark to help employers demonstrate the value of their defined contribution (DC) pension scheme.Marks and Spencer and IBM are among the first seven companies to be awarded the Pension Quality Mark, which certify that the companies’ DC ...
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Article
Watson Wyatt updates international benefits tool
Watson Wyatt has launched a new version of BenTrack, an online tool that helps multinational organisations manage the costs and risks associated with their benefit and compensation programmes across global operations.BenTrack enables multinationals to centrally manage benefit and compensation plan data from multiple countries, subsidiaries, divisions or employee groups.With local ...
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Article
Kids get to work at theme park to learn value of reward
Child labour in Britain might have died out in the 19th century, but the firm behind a newly opened theme park in Japan clearly sees the value in youngsters knowing what a day at work feels like.KidZania, a scaled-down replica of a town in the Tokyo suburbs complete with a ...
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Article
Aon Consulting: DC pension funds see improvement
Although the UK’s defined contribution (DC) pension funds have seen a £30 billion improvement to £485bn in the last month, but workers still face a ticking time-bomb according to Aon Consulting.Aon’s DC Pension Tracker for August shows expected retirement income for those now aged 60 to be just £12,021 per ...
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Article
Friends Provident enhances online pension tool
Friends Provident has enhanced its online member pension product to help members of corporate schemes better understand their finances and manage their pensions online.The additions were made following feedback from customers, employers and intermediaries. Members can now access new tools to help them understand how much they need to save ...
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Article
Almost half of top CEOs agree to salary freeze this year
Almost half of chief executives in the UK's largest 100 corporates have agreed to freeze their salaries this year after almost a decade of unprecedented increases.An annual survey by law firm Addleshaw Goddard into FTSE350 executive pay and remuneration has found that 43.5% of CEOs have agreed to the freeze ...
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Article
Cost control is biggest factor when offering benefits
The top challenge employers face when offering employee benefits is controlling costs, according to research commissioned by reward technology provider Vebnet.The survey, which questioned reward and pension decision makers in 200 of the top 1,000 companies in the UK, found that 34% saw mitigating cost as the main consideration when ...
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Article
British Airways staff take voluntary redundancy
British Airways has told 125 non-permanent cabin crew that their contracts will not be renewed beyond October, while a further 140 full-time cabin crew have accepted voluntary redundancy.The airliner said the moves were a part of its ongoing attempts to cut employment costs in unprecedented financial times which have seen ...
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Article
Buck Consultants appoints Girish Menezes for global role
Buck Consultants has appointed Girish Menezes as principal to lead the firm’s business development in the global HR technology and administration (GHRTA) practice in the UK and mainland Europe.Menezes joins from a pensions outsourcing firm and has over 15 years’ experience to bring to the practice. He has knowledge of ...
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Article
Kellogg's switches to fully-insured private medical insurance
Kellogg's has switched its private medical insurance (PMI) from a healthcare trust arrangement to a fully-insured scheme to improve its cost-effectiveness and the service for employees.The food manufacturer carried out a market review to see the cost impact of a trust compared with fully-insured schemes. As a result, it terminated ...
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Analysis
High-earner tax changes will affect reward for all
Chancellor Alistair Darling's tax changes for high earners are likely to have far-reaching consequences for employee reward at all levels, says Tom WashingtonHas there ever been a time when reward has stirred such emotion and been so newsworthy as it is now? Whether it is public anger over bloated bonuses ...
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Article
HCL Axon revamps flexible benefits and pensions
HCL Axon has revamped its flexible benefits and pension schemes, and launched online total reward statements (TRS) to boost employees' awareness and understanding of its benefits.The IT firm, which employs more than 650 staff, updated its flex scheme to include access to TRS and a net pay calculator via an ...
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Article
HSBC Actuaries and Consultants: Few employers check benefits' return on investment
Only 27% of employers believe monitoring and controlling return on investment (ROI) for their employee benefits spend should be a formal business objective.Just one in 10 organisations, meanwhile, said they had formal procedures in place to measure ROI, according to research published by HSBC Actuaries and Consultants (HACL).A number of ...
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Article
Harvest Housing Group adds perks online
Harvest Housing Group has launched a benefits portal including a new voluntary benefits scheme and online total reward statements (TRS) for its 550 employees.The Harvest Rewards portal incorporates new perks such tax-efficient childcare vouchers and holiday trading, and a new range of discounts. The website is provided by Motivano.Paper TRS ...
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News analysis: The downturn goes public
As the recession continues, so-called 'recession-proof' public sector employers are being affected just as much as the private sector, feeling the squeeze in pensions, pay and employee wellbeing.The latest Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development/KPMG Labour Market Outlook survey, published last month, found that one in five public sector employers ...
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Article
Green CO2 launches tax-efficient travel scheme
Green CO2 has launched an integrated tax-efficient green travel scheme in partnership with First Group, Halfords and Countrywide Asset Management.The salary sacrifice product enables employers to offer staff low-emission cars, bicycles and a bespoke bus service.Through tax relief and a reduction in national insurance contributions, employees can potentially save up ...
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Article
Punch Taverns saves £1m after rejigging pensions and private medical insurance
Punch Taverns has cut its reward spend by more than £1 million in the past year, but staff have not had a worse deal.Profits at the leisure firm, which employs about 18,000 staff, were hit by falling consumer spending as the recession kicked in last year. It is also a ...