By Charles Cotton, CIPD Public Policy Advsier

Look at most research on reward and the focus is on pay. Such topics as executive remuneration, merit pay or sales-based incentives predominate. Similarly, a lot of public policy attention is given to such issues as CEO pay, minimum pay or public sector pay.

However, when it comes to employee benefits, there is little research on this topic. This is odd, given that financial and non-financial perks can be such an important and expensive part of an organisation’s reward offering, such as workplace pensions.

Benefits are also rarely out of the news, whether it is the impact of automatic enrolment or what time off arrangements there are to follow the World Cup. While gender pay gap reporting has generated a lot of media coverage, many employer responses to narrowing it are in the area of benefits, such as flexible working arrangements or enhanced arrangements for maternity, paternity, parental, adoption and carers.

Similarly, staff benefits play a major part in such HR initiatives such as talent management or employee financial well-being and in such business initiatives as service innovation or enhanced productivity.

To recognise the important role that the staff perks can play in employee reward, the CIPD is devoting its annual UK Reward Management survey, in partnership with LCP, to employee benefits. If you are responsible for reward in your organisation, we would love to hear about your experiences and how you've been affected by the increase in automatic enrolment levels, what factors influence which benefits you offer and how your benefits package might respond to an ageing workforce.

Please complete the survey and enter the prize draw.