The truly flexible
benefits system
With Zest, your employees can pick and mix their flexible benefits as easily as shopping online.
Our customers
Brilliant brands giving their benefits some Zest…
FEATURES
With Zest your
employees can…
View all of their benefits in one place
Access their benefits from a PC, smartphone or tablet
Flex their benefits up or down as easily as shopping online
Understand the value of their benefits
Model benefits changes and see the impact on their take-home pay
Access employee discount schemes
Recognise colleagues with shoutouts
Receive rewards and recognition
Power to your people
It’s not enough to fill a benefits system with lots of tempting perks. It needs to be easy for your employees to use, and even easier for them to understand what it all means.
With Zest, your employees can see information about each benefit available to them in one place. They can update their benefits, add new benefits or flex existing ones up or down, at any time, or during benefits windows you control.
And with our Total Reward Statement, your staff can see the impact of any changes on the tax and NI savings they’ll make, the employer’s contributions they’ll receive and their take-home pay. So when they make their selections they can be confident they’ve made the right choice.
What they say
“Colleagues can see and do everything themselves, instantly, rather than having to rely on HR to process changes and provide policy details”
Mind, body and wallet
Great benefits schemes shouldn’t just be about bonuses, discounts and perks (although they’re lovely). For many people, support and guidance for their mental, physical and financial well-being is even more important.
Zest allows you to create resources for your employees to access on-demand, which can contain videos, podcasts and written content to support the health, wealth and well-being of your people.
Pots and pots of flexibility
With Zest, as well as the benefits you provide through our platform, you can also give employees pots of money for them to spend on products and services that they choose.
Want to provide employees with a well-being budget? Employees can claim against a personal allowance for services like health checks, home gym equipment, counselling sessions, massages or personal training. Want to help employees be productive at home? Let them claim for items such as ergonomic chairs, extra monitors or standup desks.
Whatever flexibility you want to give your employees, you remain in control, setting budgets and approving or rejecting claims before they’re reimbursed. When claims are approved, Zest communicates with your payroll to reimburse these expenses in the next payroll period.
Recognise and reward your people
Everybody likes to be acknowledged for their hard work and achievements. With Zest, employees can give their co-workers a shoutout which everyone can see when they log in. And if you want to, HR and benefits teams can assign rewards to employees who receive a mention.
What they say
“We have more than doubled our engagement on employee benefits”
employee discount providers
Delight with deals
Zest integrates with employee discount providers so your people can access perks and deals from leading brands.
Beauty
Entertainment
Health
Clothing
Fitness
Insurance
Education
Flowers
Sports
Electronics
Gifts
Travel
We put the auto into enrolment
Just like all the other benefits you can manage with Zest, you can create rules that control who has access to each pension scheme. You can set how much your maximum employer contribution will be for groups of employees based on factors like their role, length of service, location and salary too.
Zest can also manage your auto-enrollment compliance needs, including postponement and auto-enrolment notices, and confirmation of opting in, opting out or cyclical re-enrolment.
Employees can easily flex their pension contributions up or down, and see the impact any changes will make to their take-home pay and their tax and NI savings. Employees can also use SMART salary sacrifice to increase their pension contributions from just their NI savings and keep their take-home pay the same.
What they say
“Employees can view and amend their benefits packages themselves, so queries are easily resolved.”
FAQS
Flexible Benefits FAQs
Flexible benefits are benefits provided by an employer to their workforce, where individual employees can pick and mix which benefits they want, and where relevant, how much they want to contribute to certain benefits such as their pension.
A flexible benefits platform is typically a self-service system which employees can use to see information about the flexible benefits available to them and what their current selections are. If an employee wants to add any new selections or flex any existing benefits up or down, they will be able to do so via the platform. Normally, flexible benefits software is accessible over the internet via PCs, tablets and smartphones.
There are different types of flexible benefit. Many benefits are offered by the employer to their workforce from providers which the employer has pre-selected. For example, an employer is likely to have chosen specific providers for their workplace pension, and if they offer health and dental insurance, is likely to have arranged suppliers for those services too.
By offering benefits from a small, pre-selected set of providers, the employer may be able to negotiate more competitive deals for their workforce, while also reducing the amount of administration. Individual employees are then able to select which benefits they want to receive. For benefits such as pensions, employees can also change (flex) how much they want to contribute.
Another way that employers can provide flexible benefits is via benefit allowances. With an allowance, employers assign each member of staff a budget which they can spend on benefits they would like to receive. Employers can choose to set rules around appropriate benefits for each pot of money. For example, an employer might provide allowances to help employees with working from home, their mental or physical health, or their professional development. Employees can then purchase services relevant to those areas and submit receipts for reimbursement against their allowance, which the HR or benefits team can then approve or decline.
There’s no legal requirement for businesses to provide a flexible benefits platform to their workforce. However, systems such as Zest significantly reduce the amount of administration that HR and benefits teams would need to do to manage a flexible benefits scheme, while also increasing the uptake of benefits among employees.
Flexible benefits schemes enable employees to pick and mix the benefits that matter most to them and control how much they want to spend.
Giving employees flexibility with their benefits can save organisations money, by not providing benefits that people don’t value, and increase the uptake of the benefits which are important to their people.
By letting individual employees choose the benefits they want to receive organisations are able to support the health, wealth and wellbeing of their workforce. Attractive benefits schemes are also able to help recruitment, improve employee retention and increase employee engagement.
The tax and National Insurance implications vary from benefit to benefit, and whether an employer is providing a benefit through salary sacrifice. Systems such as Zest can show employees the tax and NI impact of different benefits selections before an employee makes their choice.
Our new app gives your employees access to their benefits anywhere, anytime, transforming the way they experience and manage their selections.
Our powerful app is more than a tool; it’s a purpose-driven solution crafted to elevate your employees experience and foster a workplace culture that values, supports and champions the individual needs of every employee. With user-friendly features and a commitment to seamless functionality, we invite you to embrace a future where every interaction enhances employee wellbeing. You journey to a more inclusive and engaging benefits experience starts now!