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Case study: Helping a recruitment business understand its workforce and align employee benefits accordingly

Understanding workforces and translating this into a coherent employee benefits strategy is a big challenge for many businesses, but this is what Wren Sterling does through our demographic analysis and benefit recommendation process

We help businesses, like a London-based recruitment consultancy, to solve:

  • Weak employee engagement
  • Declining years of service
  • Rising recruitment costs

The charts and comments in this article are from a recent survey of a recruitment consultancy where Wren Sterling was briefed to help resolve all three of those issues highlighted above.

Sarah Herd
Sarah Herd
Director of Employee Benefits and Engagement

During our analysis, we gather demographic data about the respondents, such as how many dependants they have. This is a clearer signal of their life stage and their needs, rather than simply asking their age. This forms part of the data that helps us to identify their needs, and establish a relevant benefits package.

We categorise according to generation, salary, gender, position in the company and any other identifying category to try and identify patterns in responses.

Surveys can confirm what you believe about your employees, but it’s the hidden information that can surprise you, and inform your employee benefit and wellbeing strategies to create positive engagement with your workforce.

The survey revealed that over half of the employees were dissatisfied with their current workplace benefits.

Specific feedback was given to the leadership team showing clear areas to address and develop a new strategy. Interestingly, the demographic analysis revealed clear patterns in how different age groups viewed their combination of benefits, indicating that their current ‘one-size-fits-all’ approach was inappropriate.

Feedback included:

“I highly value the private medical cover provided. this would be far more costly to do as an individual and I would loathe to see this go. I would also very much like to see private dental cover added to the company policy.”

“The benefits of private medical were unclear for about a year until someone came in to explain, there should be more information on the intranet or via email about what benefits are available and what our options are.”

“If there was a season ticket loan or free gym membership I think I would get good use out of these benefits as at this stage in my career monthly cost is more important than longer-term benefits.”

What happened next?

We presented our findings to the client alongside recommendations for a redesigned employee benefits package aligned to the requirements of the workforce and a plan for communicating the changes. This is vitally important for driving value from the process, as according to Capita’s 2018 Workplace Benefits insight report, 75% of employees state that they’d expect their employer to provide guidance on the benefits they offer, as well as on how appropriate each benefit might be for them and their family.

Working alongside our clients, we run a bespoke communication program to ensure employees understand the importance of the benefits offered, and the value of the financial commitment made by their employer, in their interest.

of employees state that they’d expect their employer to provide guidance on the benefits they offer

Our recommendations were accepted and we’re now running campaigns to increase awareness of benefits among employees, including seminars on retirement planning and webinars on making flexible benefit choices.

Next steps

If you’d like to find out more about how Wren Sterling could do more with your employee benefits, please contact your Wren Sterling adviser or arrange an appointment.