Debi O’Donovan’s musings on the key events of 18-24 January 2013
I have had a couple of interesting conversations this week about whether flexible benefits still exists any more (well, one has to find something interesting to chat about when the main item on the agenda is risk insurances – at least both events also had wine!).
Given that so many employers insist on staff taking a minimum level of some core benefits and then make the remaining, ever-growing list of benefits optional, surely we are now in a place where we have core and voluntary benefits run on a variety of platforms called flexible benefits, total reward, workplace savings etc.
So it is all flexible now, but looks very different to the closely defined flexible benefits plans of five or 10 years ago.
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Any thoughts?
Debi O’Donovan, Editor, Employee Benefits
Twitter: @DebiODonovan
Debbie, good question! In my opinion what you have identified is the brave new world of Employee Benefits: ‘Like Like Like’! I believe we are now living in Social Media-land, where opinions are shared openly on every topic under the sun – just like the opinion I’m offering right now 🙂 In this environment ‘what’s hot’ can quickly become ‘what’s not’, leading to an expectation of change. If you transfer this mindset into the workplace and the provision of Benefits, you can see why it has become increasingly difficult to manage the expectation of every individual employee. For me the solution (like!) lies in the provision of a couple of core Benefits (Pension & Healthcare perhaps) and then a limited selection of the most popular ‘others’. To make it work there must be a very active education and awareness strategy…and an appetite for change when you’re hit with feedback that is no longer in the ‘like’ category 🙂 At least, that’s my opinion 😉