EMPLOYEE BENEFITS
Move towards family-friendly benefits gathers pace
Employers are introducing a host of new benefits aimed at giving employees a better chance to balance work and family life or leisure. That’s the most obvious conclusion to emerge from a large-scale survey of more than 2,000 HR professionals carried out by The Reward Group in summer 1999 on behalf of the Institute of Personnel and Development.
Launched at last month’s IPD national conference, the survey found that a much wider selection of benefits are now on offer to employees in order to assist recruitment and retention — everything from family-friendly policies to health screening.
The emphasis seems to be shifting away from the traditional benefits components such as security-related benefits, pensions and holidays. The clear message is that the modern benefits package is becoming more varied and better designed to meet employees’ needs — benefits that best suit their life style and stage of life.
But the most noteworthy trend, driven by impending legislation, was the adoption of family-friendly policies. Paternity leave was the fastest growing policy, with nearly one in 10 adopting it within the past 12 months.
Among the key issues that shone through in the research of IPD members’ organisations:
Family friendly: two-thirds of respondents’ organisation (66%) now offer paternity leave, while a majority of respondents also claim that parental and/or domestic leave is available to staff. Linked to workplace demographics, leave to care for elderly relatives, although less common, is operated by 15% of organisations.
Flexible working: nearly three-quarters of organisations (73%) offer part-time working as an option, with job sharing in its wake in 57% of workplaces, followed by flexi-time (47%).
Financial counselling: exactly a quarter of surveyed organisations offers financial planning, while 34% provide career-planning advice.
Widening choice: businesses are offering employees a wider choice of benefits to give them the edge in recruitment and retention. Some, albeit a minority, now provide "convenience" benefits, including: dry cleaning (12% of respondents), food shopping services (8%) and video rental (2%).
But some benefits have yet to gain broad appeal. On-site child care is clearly not a major feature of this new benefits landscape: only one in ten of respondents have a workplace nursery, while just 2% offer the provision of after-school care.
Title: Benefiting from a balanced life?
Price: free of charge
Availability: Send an A4 SAE to: Communications department, Institute of Personnel and Development, IPD House, Camp Road, London SW19 4UX.
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