What are employee benefits?
Employee benefits are additional incentives to an employee’s regular salary.
They offer a way to attract and keep people, contribute towards improving well-being and encourage required behaviours, achievements, values and skills. Most employers want to offer benefits to their employees, but do not know which to choose. Budget, number of employees, and similar factors can play a role in your decision. By building an attractive employee benefits package, you can attract and retain quality employees, improve employee health and morale, and gain certain tax advantages.
Why use our employee benefits services?
The right employee benefits create value for employees and employers alike. We know there is no ‘one size fits all’ solution. Companies have different needs and don’t necessarily have the time, skill set or scale to work through a thorough planning process. Our client’s benefits are regularly reviewed and adapted accordingly in line with any changes to their business.
The right benefits can help you to:
- Recruit the best talent
- Retain key staff
- Maintain a motivated and happy workplace, thereby increasing profits
- Support work/life balance
Businesses can offset some of the cost through:
- National Insurance savings through salary exchange benefits such as pension contributions
- Corporation tax relief against allowable business expenses
- Employees buying extra holiday
- Having an organised and monitored scheme that is well presented will reduce time spent by the HR department or office manager releasing their time to spend on other business needs
Common Employee Benefits:
A necessity for businesses to provide their employees, however it is far from a simple box ticking exercise. Employers have legal obligations such as paying a minimum amount of pension contributions (on time), reporting to The Pensions Regulator, communicating with their employees, keeping records etc. Legal duties aside, ongoing governance and suitability reviews of the pension scheme should happen at least annually too, including reviewing the investments. Please see our workplace pension page for more information.
An essential benefit that can have huge ramifications for beneficiaries. The impact of someone dying could have huge financial impact, life cover can make a big difference. It could leave behind a legacy that covers the cost of a home, bills, children’s education etc. A vital benefit for employees.
Long-term sickness and injury could mean employees are unable to return to work for a considerable amount of time. This affects employees financially, mentally, physically and socially. It is important for employees to have the long-term security that they will be supported.
For employers, having a long-term absentee can mean a drain on production and budget. Group income protection can allow employee’s salaries to be covered and employer National Insurance and pension contributions to be covered too. You can free up payroll to hire a fixed term replacement if needed or divert resources to upskilling existing staff to step in.
Serious illnesses such as cancer and heart attacks affect so many people. When an illness or disease of this magnitude strikes, it can leave a devastating impact.
Group critical illness can allow financial security to pay for treatment, amendments to the home or cover unexpected bills.
The NHS is the pride of our nations and does incredible work. With the strain on waiting times and accessibility to treatment plans and diagnosis, going private can speed the process up in some cases, allowing them to return to work sooner in a healthy state.
One of the most tangible benefits you can offer employees. The cash plan provides cash back for trips to the dentist, eye appointments, physiotherapy, health screenings and private medical insurance excesses. Children are usually included as standard under the policy at no extra cost.
These plans tend to be lower cost than private medical insurance and highly flexible to suit your workforce needs.
Essential for any company requiring its employees to travel for business, within the UK or outside. It could cover someone who has travelled and found themselves snowed in and unable to travel back home therefore requiring hotel stay or flights being cancelled.
This cover can extend to leisure use as well as business allowing your employees to be insured wherever they go at any time, within policy limits.
A highly tax efficient scheme allowing employees to buy bikes and relevant equipment. It allows employees to spread the cost of the bike and accessories over a period of time. Employees must use their bike to travel to work no less than 50% of the time.
The employer can set a limit on how much the scheme is willing to cap the total costs per person or company wide. E-bikes are becoming very popular but can be costly as well as high-end road / mountain bikes. The flexibility allows an employer to design a scheme that works for them and their employees.
Green modes of transportation are the future of travel and the government have allowed electric car leasing to enjoy certain tax advantages.
From reduced benefit in kind percentages to salary exchange schemes. There is a push from manufacturers to deploy electric vehicles, encouraged by favourable government subsidies, ensuring more variety and supply.
Designed to support employees and their families virtually, over the phone or face to face. It’s designed to support employees mental, physical, financial and social wellbeing all year round.
The programmes are well developed and have a wide pool of resources to support many situations, whether it’s to help managers deal with employees going through a difficult time or legal matters on a neighbour dispute.
You can have a full suite of employee benefits but unless employees understand what they are, how it works for them and how to use them – it means nothing.
An often tried and tested way of making sure you have one resource for employees to learn all about their benefits is to have a handbook. Something we can design with you and build that is continuously updated and engaging.
Engaging employees is crucial and should be integrated into your health and wellbeing strategy. Whether it’s stating what a benefit is, speaking with individuals coming up to retirement, describing to employees how the pension works etc. it is important to understand what the relevant topical areas are.
How you go about communicating this can be very varied, from onsite presentations or 1-2-1s to virtual webinars. A blend of styles is usually the right way to go about it with structure and a well thought out plan which is something we can help you with.
A popular benefit often seen tagged onto many benefits. With a crossover of these shopping discount sites, it can be hard for employees to know where the best place to go is. Some specialist shopping discount sites allow for employers to ‘load’ employees wallets to spend on anything they like. A great way of providing a token of appreciation to employees and allowing them to use the money in the way the want to.
