2. Customisable benefits experiences
Employees are used to hyper-personalised experiences from the apps they use at home; Netflix serves up recommended programmes based on what they’ve previously watched or rated, and Spotify has an AI DJ that plays a mix of their favourite tunes and new artists aligned with their preferences. Employees want to feel valued as individuals and have their preferences recognised – and these experiences are driving their expectations of benefits tech.
For decades, employee benefits platforms have conflated ‘personalisation’ with ‘choice’, but offering a massive array of benefits doesn’t give employees what they need. However, through technology, employers can now create genuinely personalised experiences customised to an audience of one.
“By customising benefits to the individual, we’re not just offering a competitive package – we're making a clear statement that every single employee’s wellbeing and job satisfaction matters to us. To cater to a diverse workforce, customisation is a necessity rather than a luxury. We are sending the message that we don’t just want to compensate our people, but to truly care for them.”
Employees want benefits platforms that offer them the customisation they are used to, and employers can serve this need through benefits content and communications. For example, through technology, employers can now tailor what employees see by country, region, function, or team to ensure relevancy. They can make decisions over what integrations appear on the platform (making partners accessible through SSO), how content is delivered, and what documents they store. And employees can decide what topics they want to hear more or less about.
Of course, it’s not just within the benefits platform itself that the experience needs to be personalised. Employers are increasingly opting for benefits tech that lets them target communications by behaviour, demographics, interests and locations – and track the success of communications campaigns to see what’s resonating, and what isn’t.
Global employers haven’t always had the resources to create personalised benefits experiences which meant regions with small headcounts often got overlooked or under-serviced. The new era of global benefits technology is ensuring that every employee gets a customised experience, regardless of who, or where, they are.
“Previously when we were doing annual enrolments or launching new benefits, we were sending mass emails to that country’s population. OneHub has meant that we can now target people – so, for example, during the UK launch and annual enrolment, I could send out communications specifically for people who had not yet logged into the system. That made a massive difference and helped us to achieve a 75% engagement rate.”
