According to Aon's Benefits & Trends Survey 2019 – which is now in its ninth year – 98% of employers say employee understanding and engagement with benefits is important. However, 70% of companies spend less than £5,000 annually on communication to aid understanding.The survey of more than 200 employers, both UK-based and international, of all sizes and from across a broad range of sectors, found that engagement continues to be the main reason employers want to increase employee understanding of total reward, but only a small budget is allocated to support communication and behaviour change. Retention was the second most important reason for increasing understanding of total reward, and supporting recruitment and being an employer of choice came third.Sarah Robson, senior communication consultant at Aon, said, “If you are putting money, time and resources into benefits and well-being, it is important to make sure that employees know about them. Just like marketing a consumer product, the audience needs to be clearly understood so the right communication approaches can be used.” 

Understanding your audience and better reaching employees

The results of the survey highlighted the fact that while most companies say that understanding of, and engagement with benefits, is 'extremely' or 'very' important, the majority don’t put into practice communication techniques or programmes that would encourage behaviour change. The majority of employers surveyed spent less than £5,000 on benefits communications annually, but 46% of companies are willing to increase expenditure to improve communications. Robson added, “It is encouraging that more respondents are willing to increase their communication spend to help awareness in order that employees learn how their individual benefits can be of so much value.”

Other key takeaways from the research included:  

• Most employers mainly use emails (97%) and posters (67%) to communicate benefits
• Face to face (2019 56% vs 2018 45%) and webinars (2019 32% vs 2018 22%) are becoming more popular
• There is also an emergence of digital marketing; 44% of communications are digitally focused
• 53% of organisations don’t segment their audience
• And of those that do, 40% segment by work location, which is unlikely to have much of an impact in terms of appealing to employees’ individual needs.

Robson explained, “Just 3% of employers tailor messages according to employee attitudinal factors and preferences, but it is hoped that this area will grow in the near future. Segmentation through data, analytics and insights can help communications to be smarter, more relevant and to have the biggest impact on engagement and behaviour change.” 

Digital well-being platform aims to improve employee health 

The results of the Benefits & Trends Survey 2019 were released hot on the heels of the release of the Aon Well One app, launched in partnership with health technology firm dacadoo. It provides health scores for individuals and organisations by analysing data on physical, emotional, social and financial well-being. The app also allows employees to gain one-to-one digital well-being coaching, which supports their financial well-being and lifestyle choices. Employers gain anonymous/aggregated data to give them a deeper understanding of what they and their employees need to thrive.For more information on Aon, visit: www.aon.comSubscribe to Relocate Extra, our monthly newsletter, to get all the latest international assignments and global mobility news.Relocate’s new Global Mobility Toolkit provides free information, practical advice and support for HR, global mobility managers and global teams operating overseas.Access hundreds of global services and suppliers in our Online Directory

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