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Managing benefits: an IRS survey

Summary

Key findings from our analysis of benefits management in 132 organisations are as follows:

  • employee choice: seven in 10 respondents (70.5%) say benefits provision is fixed, with no choice for employees, while just over a quarter (27.3%) say it is a combination of fixed and flexible, with some choice for employees; only 2.3% operate truly "flexible benefits" packages;

  • policy developmen4t: benefits policy evolved in an unplanned way over time in just over half of our sample (53.8%), with the remainder stating it was the result of a clear strategy;

  • integration: only one in seven organisations (13.7%) say benefits are completely integrated within their overall reward strategy - that is complementary to base pay, variable reward, grading structures and overall objectives - while one in 10 (11.4%) claim they are not integrated at all;

  • communications: brochures or booklets are the most common way of communicating benefits to employees, used by four-fifths (80.3%) of employers questioned;

  • evaluation: encouraging informal feedback from employees is usually how organisations monitor the effectiveness of their benefits packages, cited by over half the sample (56.8%); more formal methods such as questionnaires (18.9%) and audits (15.9%) are relatively rare; and

  • objectives: recruitment and retention is cited as a key objective of benefits policy by over eight in 10 respondents (83.3%); adding value to reward (48.5%) and recognition of employee contribution (47%) are the next most common aims of employers' strategies.

    Table 2 provides details of participating organisations' general approach to benefits and a detailed breakdown of the policies and strategies they have adopted.