I have noticed that increasingly organisations are concerning themselves with their benefits in addition to their levels of pay. This is significant as areas such as flexible working have become more prominent in the post-pandemic work environment. Having a structure helps organisations consider the benefits they may wish to offer, and then track their value to the organisation in terms of how they attract, engage, and retain their workers.

Pay and Benefits:

In the most recent BTA Rewards Scoping survey (August 2024), the top 2 key areas of interest for respondent organisations were: 

1. Pay rate (current and planned increases (76.7%)

2. Benefits (66.7%)

It is noteworthy that Work-life blend was of interest to 1 in 3 organisations (36.7%). 

Benefits can be broken down into the following elements, with some illustrative examples:

Work Hours - flexible working, locations

Financial Pension - Independent financial advice, rewards platform

Health - Employee Assistance Programme (EAP), Health Cash Plan (HCP), Occupational health

Leave Annual -Buy &/or Sell, Family friendly

Learning & Development Induction - Access to courses, conferences, networking 

Pensions are often cited as the most important financial benefit given that employers must automatically enrol their workers into a pension scheme and make contributions to their pension if they're eligible for automatic enrolment. The levels of contribution can, however, vary significantly and employers should identify the importance of the contribution levels for workers based on the stage of their career rather than just offering a pension.

Benchmarking:

Most organisations will confine their benchmarking activities to focus on their direct competitors, which may be of a similar size and shape, with similar levels of affordability, and in the same sector. This is helpful but have you ever stopped to ask your team members which organisations they may leave your organisation to work for, and in which sector they may be most attracted to work within in the future?

Having an awareness of these indirect competitors may be helpful when considering the values your workers place on the benefits you provide. 

Benchmarking using an external party can provide objectivity and ensure the rewards package offered to your workers is optimised and affordable.

Reward Survey:

Join other organisations in the non-profit and social impact sector and complete the BTA Reward Survey to share your opinion on the benefits you are currently offering, and discover what other organisations are either doing or planning to do in the future with the level and range of their benefits as they seek to attract, and retain their team members.

Link to Survey: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/BTARewards2024