Employees have a better understanding of their benefits, but they’re not any happier about them. That’s the upshot of a new report by British insurance brokerage Willis Towers Watson.
In a global survey across hundreds of thousands of employees released Monday, 84% of respondents said they feel well informed about their company’s benefits. That’s up from 77% in the same survey last year. At the same time, though, the share of respondents who said they feel satisfied with their benefits fell to 61% from 66% in the prior year.
Jill Havely, WTW’s head of global community excellence and employee experience, said the uptick in the percentage of respondents who say they’re well informed of their benefits is notable, but it does not mean “those benefits are truly serving them.” Instead, the finding “reflects a broader shift in how organizations are approaching employee communication,” she said.
“While this data reflects a look across thousands of surveys globally, and it is difficult to know if surveys asked employees specifically why they feel more informed, we see several trends driving this improvement,” Havely said in an email to CFO.com.
She pointed to things like more regular, year-round communication about benefits instead of one-off meetings. Havely also said employers are using “clearer, jargon-free language” to talk to employees about their benefit offerings. “Messaging is increasingly segmented and tailored to different employee groups and life stages, making information more relevant and easier to digest,” Havely said.
WTW pulled the findings from its broader Global Employee Engagement database, which itself includes data collected from more than 250 million surveys over the last five decades, Havely said. The question about employee benefits is from a smaller subset of this group, representing responses from “well over 500,000 employees globally,” she noted.
Meanwhile, WTW’s research also found an uptick in the share of employees who say they’re satisfied with “non-monetary benefits,” which could include things like wellness programs or flexible work arrangements. Per WTW, 66% of respondents said they were satisfied with such benefits, up from 61% in the prior year’s survey.
The impact of benefits, Havely said, is ultimately an exercise in managing risk, which is why finance chiefs may find relevance in WTW’s research. “Dissatisfied employees can pose risks, from negative word-of-mouth to more serious cases such as cyber incidents or workplace misconduct,” she said. “Investing in benefits that truly meet employee needs helps build a positive culture and reduces the chances of these risks materializing.”
She said the findings may also help finance leaders find ways to “avoid overspending on benefits that employees don’t value or don’t know how to use.”
“Investing in the wrong rewards or failing to communicate them effectively is essentially money wasted,” she added.
