Employers have been urged to do more to encourage the take-up of employee benefits or risk wasting time and resources.
According to research from GRiD, nearly one in five organisations aren’t actively promoting employee benefits and instead, people are being left to their own devices to sign up for what’s on offer.
This, it said, means they’re less likely to fully understand what perks are available, and as a result, less likely to make full use of them.
GRiD believes this means many employers are wasting the money they have invested in staff perks and letting their workforce down.
Katharine Moxham, spokesperson for GRiD, said: “Getting the right benefits for staff is a huge investment for any company, so it does not make any sense that a fifth of employers seem to be letting them gather dust on a shelf, metaphorically speaking.
“Making practical and effective use of employee benefits needs to be a priority for all businesses.”
Bosses should engage with new and established employees
Ms Moxham pointed out that new hires are often most open to hearing about what employee perks are on offer.
As a result, she believes that employers should “strike while the iron is hot” with these individuals.
However, Ms Moxham stressed that it’s also important to engage with longer standing members of the team to improve the take-up of employee perks.
This, she said, is because people who have had a positive experience with the benefits on offer will start to communicate these advantages to their colleagues.
Ms Moxham added that while employee-to-employee communication is a “vital part of the utilisation jigsaw”, bosses should never “become complacent and should always have a strategy in place to encourage take-up”.
Low take-up means perks could be cut
Employers want a return on any investment, so if employee perks get a low take-up, bosses will deem they’re not getting a good return.
That, in turn, means that if budgets ever need to be tightened, employee benefits will be high up on their list of things to be cut.
Ms Moxham warned that this would be “a loss” not only to employees, but also to HR teams, as they will have “worked hard to set out the case for the benefit in the first place, as well as selecting the right provider”.
Written by James Glynn
Senior Financial Content Writer
