If you’re struggling with employee engagement and your employees aren’t taking advantage of the schemes and benefits you offer, there could be a few reasons.
We’ll cover a few of those here, but it’s worth considering that every company is different and it’s worth carry out some research into what your employees think of your current set up.
Start by conducting a survey if possible, asking key questions such as does the current benefits set up suit your needs? If not, why not? What schemes would you like to see us introduce?
Again, this will depend on your business, there could be many different reasons why your employees aren’t using your benefit schemes.
Here are a few in more detail:
You don’t offer enough schemes
There are so many different employee benefit schemes out there that are designed to cover every aspect of your employees’ needs, so why just stick to the few schemes that appear to be the most popular?
Realistically, you might be restricted by cost. However, some schemes like Holiday Trading and the Cycle to Work scheme will actually save you money in National Insurance (NI), which is dictated by scheme take up. The higher the take-up the more NI savings you’ll make.
If you feel like you provide a comprehensive benefit offering, maybe the schemes included simply don’t appeal to your employees?
You’re not offering flexible benefits
Flexible benefits are becoming more and more popular and are a hot topic this year in employee benefits and HR. Why? Because the demand for it is increasing from employees.
A typical flexible benefits set up will allow employers to allocate their employees an employee benefits allowance, sometimes referred to as a ‘flex pot’ or ‘flexible benefit allowance’ which they can then choose to spend on the schemes that suit them best.
This means your benefits offering will better suit everyone in your business and not just a select group of people.
Offering flexible benefits will bring your employee benefits offering up-to-date and drive engagement.
Your communications aren’t on point
“Let’s face it, it doesn’t matter how good your benefits package is if your employees don’t know about it.” Whether it’s posters, emails, flyers, letters, however you communicate your employee benefits you need to make sure it resonates and drives scheme take-up.
Consider your pre-launch, launch and post-launch communications of your different schemes. What is your message going to be? How will those schemes benefit your employees? Which of your employees are they going to appeal to? How does this fit with your internal brand?
Your set up is difficult to manage
Managing employee benefits can be an arduous, time-consuming task. As such, you might not have the time to plan and optimise your employee benefits communications and you might not have the time required to manage more schemes.
That’s where having an employee benefits platform comes in. Having a platform that houses all your benefits makes managing them easy and less time-consuming and will give you more time to spend on communications and optimising your benefits offering, driving scheme take-up and improving employee happiness.
Review your scheme providers
You might have an employee benefits offering that you think ticks all the boxes. However, it could be that your employees are having a bad experience with the scheme providers. There could be other scheme providers out there that provide a better offering. Maybe there are better discount providers out there? Or gym membership discount providers that can save your employees more money?
Look at all the schemes you offer and see if switching provider could offer your employees something a bit more appealing.
When it comes to reviewing your offering, start with your employees. Try to get as good an idea as possible of what their main problems are with your offering.
It could be that they simply don’t know about it? So, there’s a communication problem, which is a relatively simple fix.
It could be that they don’t feel the schemes benefit them, which could point to a problem with the providers or simply that the schemes aren’t suitable for your staff.
Solving these issues will ensure that your employee benefits set up is easy-to-manage and beneficial for every single one of your employees.