Poor legacy work benefits have mostly been consigned to the dustbin of employee history.
But the rapid digital transformation of many organisations’ HR functions has brought hyper-personalisation into the light, and HR tech is leading the way.
HR tech foundations.
HR tech is providing the foundation for making sure workers are better looked after, and employers have better, more personal, and more attractive perks to offer staff and potential staff in the war for talent.
But how exactly is HR tech doing this, and are HR and recruitment software platforms really the difference between limp work perk pick-up, and a genuinely competitive benefits culture of appreciation, reward and recognition?
For this piece, we took inspiration from a detailed article from The HR Director EMPLOYERS STRUGGLING TO ADAPT BENEFITS TO CHANGING DEMANDS.
In it, author Matt Macri-Waller, the founder and CEO of Benefex, highlights key attitudes and workplace opinions regarding modern workplace benefits, how they are changing in light of our more recent cost of living financial rollercoaster, and what employers can expect in the future from candidate work perk expectations.
“Only 13% of employees in the UK feel that their employer’s benefits provision closely aligns with their needs”.
This should be a red flag for every employer across the country.
Benefits are a multi-purpose HR weapon: some employers roll out a system of transparent reward and recognition, whilst others provide a foundation of perks to draw in talent.
Most employers do a mix of both and most have had to change their perks culture in light of the Great Resignation and talent shortages. For those that haven’t changed, it should be a high priority to retcon benefits packages to meet the needs of today’s workers.
How can HR tech help?
- This is where data and flexible HR software use come into play.
- If you’re not yet weaponizing your HR data to improve workplace culture you’re working with one hand tied. But to gather the sort of game-changing, workplace-revolutionising data needed to perfect a benefit offer you need software platforms that provide granular detail on everything from employee contentment, performance management, interview feedback, exit interview feedback, peer reviews and more.
- This sort of granular performance and opinion detail provides a birds-eye view of in-work attitudes to benefits and their effectiveness as tools for hiring and retaining talent.
“96% of HR and reward professionals report a significant shift in employee attitudes and behaviours towards benefits over the past 12 months. In particular, employees are seeking greater flexibility and personalisation in their benefits provision”.
Here we combine benefit context with rollout speed.
The last 12 months have seen a sea-change in behaviours regarding workplace flexibility and how important it is for workers to have the option of flexible working.
How can HR tech help?
- The rapid proliferation of remote workplace tools like Zoom, Slack, Asana and the rest was a direct result of the pandemic – but the long-term effects of digital efficiencies are only now being seen.
- HR tech covers a massive and varied technical field, from AI-augmented talent searching and vetting to video interviewing to performance management tools. The effectiveness of flexible work – indeed, the most important aspect of ANY hiring and retention strategy going forward – must be how HR tech helps remote work, and how well embedded, usable, and relevant HR tech platforms are at pulling together remote teams.
“Employees are increasingly favouring benefits that help with their financial wellbeing and provide protection against the impact of illness and injury. Amongst the top 10 most valued are life insurance, health screenings, critical illness insurance, dental insurance, pension, private medical insurance, childcare vouchers and income protection”.
If this statistic shows us anything it’s that financial, physical and mental health are intertwined, that employers are expected to understand the intersection of money and health, and that employers are expected to help employees across both aspects.
“65% of workers see benefits as very important for financial wellbeing – up from 53% in 2022” is the key stat here – benefits are not considered just a perk or a bonus add-on but central to financial wellbeing as a fixed salary.
How can HR tech help?
- This is where real-time data – in the form of contemporary salary guidelines, communication with workers seeking promotion, and communication of pay structures to existing and future hires – can make the most impact.
- Hyper-personalisation plays a role here too (if organisations can manage it, of course). Hyper-personalisation of benefits means creating bespoke benefits packages that befit an employee based on their specific needs. This can be expensive and sometimes not relevant but can work wonders at teams with varying demographic, accessibility, disability and cultural requirements.
- Clearly the need is there, and employers are increasingly expected to take the lead on providing a further financial foundation for workers.
“HR and reward professionals overwhelmingly believe that benefits…(can) help align employee values with organisational purpose (84%). Encouragingly, the research also reveals that investment in all aspects of employee experience – including benefits and wellbeing – to increase over the next 12 months”.
The benefits of well-curated benefits are clear – not only are staff better looked after and the entire employee experience is improved, alignment with organisational purpose overwhelmingly increases too.
Benefits in this regard connect people and labour with company meaning and community placement. Workplace benefits become a vector for meaningful labour, and as any right-thinking HR leader knows the alignment of labour to purpose is hiring and talent retention gold standard.
How can HR tech help?
- HR tech can provide the digital space for this alignment to occur. This is where internal social networks, peer reviewing and remote workflows augment ideas sharing and cultural exploration online.
- But relying entirely on tech will work against HR leaders who want to raise company purpose and meaning – tech provides the means to bring people together, to align behaviours and digitise connections, and should be well-invested in. But not at the cost of in-person, tangible, real-life connection.
- To rely on HR tech to do the heavy lifting of ideating and creating community is not and should never be the intention.
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