Before COVID-19, employee well-being could have easily been mistaken as merely a buzzword or an employer branding tool to attract and retain talent. Today, as a result of the pandemic, employee well-being can no longer be seen as a fad but an essential focus for every organization.
Today, most employers recognize their responsibility in supporting their employees' well-being. However, with this recognition comes the complication of knowing what well-being benefits you should offer your employees and what benefits are, indeed, helpful and supportive to every one of your employees.
So, how do international companies address every employee's needs, not only across offices but across borders? With multiple generations working together, and each with different preferences and requirements depending on their life stage, is there such thing as one-size-fits-all when it comes to employee well-being?
Getting Your Well-being Benefits Right
A recent Gallup article shares that employers need to understand that well-being is comprised of five elements: career, social, financial, community, and physical. Each of these five elements impacts each other, and work affects every one of them.
When reviewing your current employee benefits offer, consider each of the five elements. How can you address each of these elements with your well-being benefits? For example, think pensions and insurances, gym memberships and yoga, online counseling, grocery delivery services, smoking cessation programs, physical (team) activity challenges, discount massages, and homeworking equipment.
Of course, offering a wide selection of well-being benefits and administering them on an international scale has both geographical and logistical challenges. This is where adopting a global-but-local approach is essential.
One solution is to introduce a flexible benefits budget model where each employee is given a fixed budget from their employer to spend on a range of pre-selected well-being benefits. To learn more, don’t miss our post, Top 5 Reasons to Offer Flexible Employee Benefits.
Using a flexible benefits budget model globally means offering employees in every country the same type of benefits but utilizing local suppliers in each country.
Managing Your Benefits Right
When it comes to the administration of flexible benefit models as described above, implementing a global benefits management platform that enables local customization is essential.
With a global benefits platform, such as Benify's SaaS platform, HR professionals can manage their employee well-being benefits all in one place through the global dashboard and get a clear and comprehensive global overview of the costs and spending and see supplier costs and prices – all in a single view.
An employee benefits platform also creates greater employee self-service, resulting in greater employee independence and reduced administration for HR. Enabling your employees to make their selections through their benefits platform allows them to customize their well-being benefits to suit their personal requirements.
Why Employee Self-Service Is Right
The global recruitment company, Adecco, is an excellent example of a company that realized the importance of giving employees the flexibility to choose their own benefits and, at the same time, creating greater employee self-service. Through their employee benefits platform, Adecco employees can make selections according to their needs.
In addition to the regular vacation days that employees are given, Adecco offers its employees in the Netherlands an additional 13 days a year. Employees can then choose to have those 13 days paid out in full, paid out in part, or take them as extra vacation days. Read more about Adecco’s flexible benefits management by downloading our Adecco client case.
Want to know what today’s employees want from their employers? To find out, we surveyed over 5,000 employees from various industries and age groups throughout Europe to find out what benefits are most important to them, what benefits they would consider changing employers for, and what effect HR tech platforms have on benefits appreciation and the overall employee experience. The results can be found in The Benefits and Engagement Report.
