Employee benefits have never carried more strategic weight. With nearly a third of UK employees willing to move jobs for a better package, and only 12% saying they are fully satisfied with what they currently receive, according to Drewberry’s May 2025 Employee benefits and workplace satisfaction survey, the pressure on employers to get this right has rarely been greater.
Yet new data suggests that investment alone is not the problem. For many organisations, the challenge lies in how benefits are designed, communicated and managed once they are in place.
The Employee benefits benchmarking report, published in April 2026 by Brown and Brown Health and Employee Benefits, draws on responses from 626 HR and finance professionals across the UK. The report identifies five areas where the gap between employer intent and employee experience is widest, and where the most meaningful improvements can be made.
Benefits communication failing to land
Despite 91% of employers believing their benefits are understood, Drewberry’s 2025 employee research tells a different story: only 36% of employees say they fully understand what their employer provides, and just 11% recall receiving regular communication about their benefits.
Email remains the dominant channel, used by 57% of respondents, followed by employee handbooks. These are not ineffective by default, but they are passive. Most benefits require context and repetition to drive genuine engagement, and a one-off enrolment message is unlikely to change behaviour.
Pension governance remains overlooked risk
More than one in five employers (21%) admit they have no formal governance in place for their workplace pension scheme, and 21% review their scheme less than annually or not at all. Auto-enrolment established the floor; governance is what happens above it.
Without regular oversight, investment strategies can drift out of alignment with workforce demographics, contribution structures can fall behind market expectations, and provider charges can quietly erode employee outcomes.
Employers missing out on salary sacrifice savings
Almost 40% of employers are not using salary sacrifice for workplace pension contributions, despite its capacity to reduce national insurance costs for both employer and employee simultaneously. With employment costs rising and budgets under pressure, this is one of the more straightforward efficiency measures available, yet awareness and implementation remain inconsistent.
Manual benefits administration is a risk
Over a quarter of employers still rely on spreadsheets or manual paperwork to manage their benefits, and 47% have experienced at least one data error in the past year as a result.
Managing between three and seven providers simultaneously, as 62% of respondents do, while relying on disconnected or manual systems creates compounding risk. Errors affect payroll accuracy, provider relationships and, ultimately, employee trust.
Can employers afford not to benchmark?
Half of employers actively benchmark their benefits against competitors. Almost the same proportion do not. This means a significant share of organisations are making investment decisions without visibility of how their offering compares in the market they are competing in for talent.
Workplace pension contributions, health cover levels and protection benefits are all shifting, and employers which are not tracking those movements may not realise they are falling behind until the consequences show up in recruitment or retention data.
Closing the gap
What connects these five findings is a common theme: the gap between what employers provide and what employees understand, use and value. Closing that gap requires more than increasing spend. It requires structure, measurement and a more deliberate approach to how benefits are delivered day to day.
