Make a real statement to your staff

To successfully build employee engagement, employers have to be sure they are communicating their reward and benefits packages effectively. It is clear from research recently undertaken by Accor Services with employers and employees - Reward to engage: rewards, benefits and employee engagement in today’s organisations – that this is not the case.

One way of increasing employees’ understanding of their benefits is to introduce personalised total reward statements that advise employees of the financial value of their rewards, benefits and incentives. Currently less than one in ten employees (9%) told Accor Services they receive this and only one in eight (12%) of employers say they offer it.

Motivano’s Mark Carman agrees that employers are not maximising the impact of the rewards and incentives they offer staff:

"We estimate that most benefit packages are only 30% effective in most organisations. If employers were to spend a bit more on communicating them to staff they could have twice the impact. But to do this they have to take the view that reward is more than a recruitment tool," he says.

Arup, the global firm of designers, engineers and business consultants, has over 7000 employees based in 32 countries. The firm’s employees enjoy excellent pay and benefits, but the company wanted each member of staff to better understand the value of each item and increase their appreciation of their overall benefits package. To achieve this, the business adopted Motivano’s online Total Reward Statements solution.

Arup’s online Total Reward Statement lists each employee’s reward items, such as salary, profit sharing plans, car allowance, pension, health insurance, life cover, accident insurance and income protection. It also includes items that have not been assigned a monetary value, like season ticket loans and flu vaccinations, in order to draw these less obvious perks to the attention of their employees.

These personalised statements enable employees to get a deeper understanding and appreciation of the investment Arup has made in them. And the positive feedback from staff following the total reward rollout supports this. Managers in the business also report that they value the clear presentation of the rewards and benefits, and in the UK the number of people leaving the business for reward-related reasons has halved since the system went live.