Unlimited holidays, wellbeing days, remote working: reward and ‘perks’ packages are changing to suit new ways of working. With a big focus on employee wellbeing, Datagraphic’s Glyn King looks at how payroll teams can use their skills (with a little help from technology) to understand what employees want and to drive change.
During the pandemic, many people took time to evaluate their work-life balance and understand the importance of their wellbeing. In response to this organisations are looking at their rewards and benefits packages to reflect new ways of working and help improve financial, health and mental wellbeing.
The challenge going forward is offering relevant rewards and benefits that are sustainable, affordable and relevant to individual needs.
This is where payroll teams can step up and contribute towards their organisation’s reward strategy, drive change, and help improve employee wellbeing.
Using existing skills to drive change
Your teams already have the skills and information to help improve your organisation’s reward and benefit offering:
- You have an engaged workforce
Your teams regularly communicate with employees: from handling calls and emails about pay-related queries to sending payslips and other employee documents on a weekly or monthly basis. As a regular touchpoint for employees, you can check in on employees to see how they are feeling and communicate important company updates, making them feel valued. - You have access to valuable data
You have the data and knowledge at your fingertips to help guide employees and other stakeholders. If you can see from the data a proportion of your workforce is close to retirement age, you can check to see how they are preparing for that stage of their life. Employees making savings for the end of their career can feel anguish if they lack understanding about the process, what they are entitled to or the value of saving for retirement. Working with your organisation’s pension providers, you can help communicate and educate employees about auto-enrolment and the pension scheme(s) available.The impact of financial worries, poor health and stress on employee motivation and mental health can be significant. But by offering advice, using the information you already have access to, and communicating effectively with employees, you can have a real positive impact on their wellbeing.
Using technology to drive change
Employees want to see if their payslip and the amount they’ve been paid is correct. So, whether this is on a weekly or monthly basis, payday is the perfect opportunity to grab the attention and share important information on rewards and benefits or employee wellbeing updates.
If you deliver online payslips, use this technology to engage further with your employees. There are third-party solutions, like Datagraphic’s Epay, that provide more than online payslips. Using the secure online portal, you can create a communication hub to share pension advice, helplines for mental health support, company updates, and more. You can also have a two-way conversation through the portal, so you can reach out and check in on employees, and they can instantly respond securely and privately.
To offer relevant rewards that will help improve employee wellbeing, you need to understand what employees want. Again, by interacting with employees when they are already engaged with you (i.e. on payday), you can encourage employees to take part in an online survey to tell you what reward and benefits they would value the most. You can then use this information to help guide the organisation on their reward offering and help match the health and wellbeing package to what your employees’ want, which will immediately impact employee engagement.
If you already have a reward and benefits platform, you can use your online payslip delivery as a way of driving engagement to your platform through single-sign-on (SSO). This means employees are going through the reward platform first and possibly engaging with the different benefits you offer before clicking to view their latest payslip. SSO is great for employees, having access to their information all in one place, so they can quickly find the information they need.
Technology can help in many ways. As more employees work remotely, you must use easily accessible technology to communicate with them regularly so they feel empowered and engaged with what’s happening in your organisation.
Sharing your insight to drive change
Sharing the data and insight you gain with other stakeholders within your organisation can help guide strategic decision making and drive change to improve employee wellbeing. For example, you have access to timesheets and can see the numbers of hours worked, so you can see who is consistently working overtime. This information can be shared with line managers for them to encourage those individuals to adopt a better work-life balance and prevent employee burnout.
By proactively sharing valuable information with other departments, you can make a real difference and improve overall employee wellbeing.
In the future, reward and wellbeing strategies will need a flexible approach to meet the changing needs of all employees. The use of technology will become even more crucial in boosting employee engagement and helping payroll and HR teams manage their reward strategies more effectively. Ultimately helping to create a forward-thinking culture based on data-driven decisions.
Get in touch for more information and advice on how automation technology can improve employee engagement and wellbeing.
