Q&A: Employee Benefits: How To Stop Wasting Money

Under the title Employee Benefits: How to stop Wasting Money, The HR World’s second webinar for May placed employee benefits under the microscope, examining what it means to deliver meaningful and successful rewards in a challenging workplace.

It featured input from Wendy Rose, Global Sales/Partnerships Director at Dialogue, Philomena Gray, Global Chief People Officer at Imagination and Mary Beighton, People & Culture Director at Zuto. The webinar is available on demand and as a podcast – but there were a couple of questions remaining which the panellists tackle below to further discuss the subject.

1: While the webinar suggests you shouldn’t waste money on employee benefits do you think there are times when you’ll pay ‘over the odds’ for benefits to attract or retain key talent?

Philomena Gray: I believe that understanding what your employees value from their benefit programmes is valuable and some of these may come at a significant cost – so if you need to attract talent and retain them you do need to prioritse appropriate benefits and plan for any additional costs.  If you don’t do this, you could spend more money on recruitment fees and onboarding new joiners.

Mary Beighton: The benefits market is competitive, so it’s well worth benchmarking what you’re paying and reviewing any increases from your provider on contract renewal so you don’t end up paying over the odds over time – a real example of this is Zuto saving circa £20K on a recent group income protection renewal just by looking at the market. Do your benchmarking and push your suppliers on costs. It’s also worth bearing in mind that there is potentially a lot of overlap on the “value add” extras that tend to come with a core benefit (eg EAP or virtual GP as an add-on for core health cash plan benefits), so look for opportunities to negotiate if there is any duplication of services that you don’t need.

2: Can company culture actually have more of an impact than particular employee benefit offerings and if so should we concentrate our efforts there rather than on benefits?

Philomena Gray: I believe both are equally important and taking your eye off the ball on any of them could have a negative impact.

Mary Beighton: Agree completely – toxic culture can have as high an impact on attrition rates than benefits and compensation