The Speed Of Integration

If there’s one thing that business leaders across industries agree on, it’s that change is a constant. To meet the challenges of a constantly evolving business environment, firms will always need to be adjusting and adapting how they operate.

To do this, they need highly-skilled and engaged workers. But amid “the great resignation” – a term coined to describe the high numbers looking to quit their jobs – employers are battling to attract and retain talent.

A multitude of factors contribute to making companies attractive places to work. The right remuneration. Purposeful and challenging work. Opportunities to progress and develop. A sense of team spirit. And while salary will continue to be a major driver, the entire compensation package needs to be competitive and relevant to employees. Regardless of whether they are newly arrived or long-term workers.

Yet while employers increasingly offer varied and more comprehensive benefits, the platforms they use to run them can be slow and unwieldy. Leaders might want to change the platform. But they fear the implementation period will be too long, expensive and administratively laborious.

It doesn’t have to be this way. In this guide, we’ll explore the increasing importance of not only tailoring benefits to compensation packages but having a platform that is easy to use and, most importantly, fast to integrate.

The power of personalised benefits

Workers expect an employee experience tailored to them. They want to use their preferred tools and apps to do their jobs. They desire flexibility in where they work.

The business case for this is clear. People who report having a positive employee experience are 16 times more engaged than employees with a negative experience. Engaged employees are eight times more likely to want to stay at a company.

At the same, what workers value from their employment situation is changing.

In one study, financial compensation has gone from being the fifth most important priority for employees, to third. It trails good work-life balance and great relationships with colleagues.

Benefits are essential to the employee experience. Another survey found that 80% of employees would choose additional benefits over a pay raise.

While this won’t be true of all, it shows how important the benefits programme has become. Businesses that are serious about retaining critical talent know they need to personalise every aspect of the employee experience. This includes offering a range of benefits and ensuring they remain relevant.

The end of the one-size-fits-all model

The writing is on the wall for the one-size-fits-all model. Businesses know they need to tailor their employee offer.

But to do that at scale, and at speed, requires technology that enables hyper-personalisation quickly. What’s more, these services need to integrate effectively with all the other apps, services, software and infrastructure the business already uses to keep its systems operating.

It adds up to a significant challenge, made more complex by the perception that the window of opportunity to make changes is small and rarely comes around.

That doesn’t need to be the case. The right platform can meet the business needs for both technology and how it supports and compensates employees. Specifically, it can:

• Improve engagement with the benefits programme:
  Often benefit platforms are underutilised, leading to poor return on investment and employees missing opportunities. The right platform will drive higher levels of engagement.
• Enable employers to build bespoke benefits packages that suit the varying needs of their workforces:
  Being able to choose relevant benefits is critical if employers are to give their employees greater flexibility in building the right compensation package for themselves.
• Adjust quickly to changing needs:
  Circumstances change, both at a business and an individual level. The right platform needs to reflect the need to adapt, adding or removing benefits easily. Employers can respond in real-time to new situations and changing demands.
• Make benefits relevant to hybrid working:
  Employers can quickly update benefits so that they are relevant to new working arrangements. For example, benefits that could only be accessed “on sight” (such as a creche, yoga class, parties) can be made accessible to remote workers in a different way (such as through a voucher system) by quickly updating the platform.
• Communicate the value of benefits to employees:
  The platform should also be able to provide employees with all they need to know about the total value of their employment, not just their individual rewards.

Zest is that platform

Such a platform already exists, with Zest. A lightning-fast set-up process makes it possible to change quickly, with the entire deployment managed in days or weeks, rather than months, at any time of the year. In addition, Zest also delivers:

• Quick and simple set-up:
  However complicated the benefits scheme, Zest can have it up and running in as little as two weeks. The platform can create benefits in a matter of minutes using the revolutionary rapid Benefit Builder.
• Easy to update and adapt:
  Zest’s Benefit Builder enables configuration in a matter of minutes, not days. Because they can be updated at any time quickly and easily, not everything that an employer is likely to need has to be configured ahead of going live. It’s possible to get it going straight away and add more as time goes on.
• Removes the pain of admin:
  automate the benefit selections. Generate provider reports at the touch of a button. Schedule all reporting needs to ensure reports are delivered to the relevant people, whenever they are needed. Seamlessly connect it to all other existing systems.
• Lower implementation fees:
  Some 60% of organisations say that cost is their biggest barrier to implementing employee benefit technology. With Zest, less set-up time means less cost.
• Provider agnostic:
  Zest can support all benefits, benefit types and benefit selection options, including any time benefits.
• Flexible configuration:
  define the maximum allowance for any number of benefits. Set this to reflect eligibility and the employee’s personal circumstances. There’s no limit on the number of benefits that Zest can configure.
• Higher levels of employee engagement:
  on average 89% of employees engage with Zest’s easy-to-use platform, driving overall investment return as well as helping demonstrate the value of compensation packages and contributing to employee retention.

Conclusion: a new benefits platform in hours, not weeks

Offering a personalised employee experience is critical to retention. So too is being agile and flexible throughout every aspect of operations.

In addition, compensation needs to be tailored just as much as personal devices or working arrangements but having the right platform to do so is critical.

Working with Zest enables that tailoring and its speed of integration is such that changes can be made in hours and days, rather than once a year. So employers can focus on getting more from their teams, and not worrying that employees will leave for more competitive offers.