Here, Dipa Mistry Kandola shares her top three takeaways from CIPD and LCP’s joint reward research.

Our joint research highlights more employers than expected don't promote their benefits or make them easily accessible to employees.

1. How can organisations get better at this?

Making benefits accessible is a combination of ensuring the package is tailored for the audience and that there is regular, multi-channel communication.

HR professionals need to regularly re-evaluate how benefits are communicated and accessed by employees so they can understand what’s working well and what’s not. By taking this approach, efforts can be focused, targeted and bring strong return on investment both in terms of budget, resource, and employee engagement.

Organisations will only be able to get true engagement from their people if they offer tailored benefits facilitated through a comprehensive, multi-channel communication strategy that encourages feedback, demonstrated within this case study.

The way benefits are communicated, delivered and measured is just as important as having the right benefits in place.

2. What’s your take on the top ten benefits?

Our survey found that currently the ten most popular benefits offered to employees across all sectors are: pension scheme – trust or contract-based; paid leave for bereavement; training and career development; childcare vouchers; occupational sick pay; employee assistance programme; Christmas party and/or lunch; free tea and coffee; 25 days' or more paid leave for full-time employees; paid leave for jury service.

With the exception of Christmas party and/or lunch, I think the top ten will always be prevalent, but from recent trends we will continue to see an increase in a more holistic approach captured under “wellbeing” objectives that include mental, physical and financial education / support benefits.

3. What are your predictions for the reward space in 2019/20?

Over the next 12 months I predict that many organisations will look to thoroughly assess whether their benefits package is having a positive impact and achieving outcomes for the business and their people.

In order to do this, companies need to look at a number of key measurables; from take-up to number of interactions / usages of each benefit within the package. If this is low, a further question needs to be asked around how accessible the current offering is before anything is changed or removed.

I also predict we will see an increase in usage of technology to deliver benefits in organisations supported by a more rounded strategy, which encompasses all benefits, wellbeing and education strands under the reward/benefits umbrella.

Whilst it can seem a big initial outlay in terms of project cost and time, by having a comprehensive strategy in place, companies can phase in forward-planned, considered projects as opposed to reactively implementing initiatives ad-hoc which can save time and money in the long run.

And by harnessing technology and data, organisations can make a move to truly understanding the success of the benefits package in place.

Dipa Mistry Kandola is Head of Flexible Benefits Services at LCP