EMPLOYEE BENEFITS
New research by Employee Benefits and Watson Wyatt: part 1
Despite heavy promotion by providers and consultants keen to jump on the lucrative bandwagon, flexible benefits remain far from universal. A new survey carried out by Employee Benefits magazine in association with Watson Wyatt, the human resource consultancy, sought to find out why.
In essence, the aim of this large-scale survey was to put some of the commonly-held assumptions about flexible benefits to the test. First, in terms of its take-up, the research confirms that flex is still somewhat at the margins of mainstream benefits practice: only 62 organisations in the 500-company survey currently offer flexible benefits plans.
But it also suggests that some of the supposed problems — in particular, the administrative complexity, the difficulty of finding computer software and high implementation costs — may actually have been taxing employers less than has been thought:
although 60% of the flex users had experienced problems with the complexity of administration, just 16% found this to be a major problem
getting administration software was only a big problem for a quarter of the 62 participants with flex
only eight out of the flex pioneers actually had high implementation costs.
For companies trying to cut down on the duplication of benefit provision and on perks which are irrelevant to their employees, flex is considered an overwhelming success by survey respondents. As many as nine in ten of the flex pioneers said that their benefits are now better targeted to employee needs.
However, the survey makes clear that it is far from plain-sailing for those planning to introduce flex. Although it is frequently touted as a key way to give your organisation the edge when it comes to recruiting and retaining staff, there was little support for this view among those that have already implemented flex. In fact, just 11% found it improved recruitment to a great extent, while the comparable figure for retention was only 6%.
Survey details
Title: "Strategic reward", Employee Benefits, March 2000.
Survey sample: the 15-page survey is based on information supplied by 500 organisations, 62 of which operate flexible benefit schemes.
Methodology: survey questionnaires mailed to 6,000 "employee benefits decision-makers".
Availability: call Employee Benefits in London, tel: 020 7970 4000 or email
employee-benefits@centaur.co.uk