Dive Brief:
- A survey of 500 HR professionals and 1,000 employees found that 18% of workers in global companies aren’t happy with the way they access and enroll in their companies’ benefits plans. And 17% dislike the way benefits are explained to them.
- Thomson Online Benefits, an international software company, released the findings in its Global Employee Benefits Watch 2016/17 report. The company also found that, although 90% of employers in the study view benefits as crucial to their recruiting and retention efforts, 70% fail to offer benefits plans that effectively engage workers across the globe and help them understand their benefits’ value.
- Outdated technology is the likely cause of employees’ frustration. Companies might not have kept up with technological upgrades in benefits administration.
Dive Insight:
Human resource management systems, especially in big companies, are five years old on average and nearly half are seven years old. In the evolving technology world, seven-year-old systems are obsolete. Employees typically access benefits only when they need to, but when they do, they expect a speedy process that pulls up easy-to-understand information.
Benefits are a sizable expense for companies. They account for 31.4% of workers’ total compensation, reports the U.S Bureau of Labor Statistics. Upgrading an obsolete HRMS that improves the way employees access and decipher their benefit plans is well worth the cost.
