Guy Hayward, chief executive officer of finance sector recruitment firm Goodman Masson expects any business case his benefits team presents to be unique and engaging and to have significant benefits for his workforce by helping them deal with current challenges, such as saving for their first home or repaying student debts.
“A benefit must have a directly positive impact on the life of an employee, so that they are excited about coming to work, because they believe that their employer is looking after them, so they are engaged and so their performance increases and we prosper when they stay,” he explains.
Hayward led by example when he proposed a three-year mortgage fund to the organisation in 2012 , which is due to mature next year. The organisation contributes to any deposit an employee saves through the fund, which was introduced in conjunction with a flexible benefits scheme, implemented by Jelf Employee Benefits, for three years.
An employee that saves £300 of their monthly basic salary plus £5,000 of their annual bonuses over the three-year period could expect to save around £42,000 with Goodman Masson’s contribution.
As part of the business case, Hayward identified the issue he wanted to address (high staff turnover rates), set a clear objective (to boost staff retention), proposed a new benefit to help meet the objective (a mortgage fund) and finally identified how the impact of his benefit would be measured (retention rates and return on investment).
Collectively, the 32 employees who are saving through the fund have generated just more than £2 million of profit on £7.2 million worth of sales for the organisation in the last two-and-a-half years.
“The cost of replacing employees and waiting for the productivity and performance of new staff to increase because they are in a new business is time,” says Hayward. ”If staff are staying with us, then [the fund] is money well spent.”
He advises benefits professionals to ensure that any business case that they work on clearly identifies and addresses a specific business issue within their organisation.
Goodman Masson’s staff turnover rate is less than 16% compared with his industry average of 42%.