GRiD’s research highlights three critical insights for employers:

• Highlight Exceptional Support: Employee benefits are now a fundamental part of compensation packages. Employers need to emphasise the unique aspects of their support to ensure they stand out.
• Foster Awareness and Understanding: It's not enough for employees to know about their benefits; they must also fully understand them. Continuous evaluation is necessary to ensure staff comprehensively grasp what is available.
• Simplify Access: Benefits must be easily accessible. Complicated processes can hinder appreciation, so employers should strive for simplicity and efficiency in how benefits are delivered.

If, after these efforts, appreciation remains low, it may be necessary to reconsider whether the benefits provided align with employees’ needs and preferences.

These issues manifest differently across organisations. However, given the substantial investment employers make in benefits, it's crucial they are valued by employees. Properly appreciated benefits can significantly enhance recruitment and retention efforts.

Katharine Moxham, spokesperson for GRiD, said: “We know that communication and appreciation are inextricably linked, as employees tend to value benefits more highly when they have a good understanding of what is available.”

The most popular ways to measure staff appreciation of employee benefits are:

• Informal feedback to managers, HR, employee benefits or wellbeing champions (46%)
• Feedback/suggestion box - either physical or email - for employee benefits-related feedback (46%)
• Formal staff survey (45%)
• Employee benefits forum/working group/employee liaison group (40%)
• Online activities that measure clickthrough rates on certain topics, e.g. on company intranet (39%)

It’s good to see so much measurement in place but this must go hand-in-hand with communication. Many benefits, particularly group risk (employer-sponsored life assurance, income protection and critical illness) change and are updated regularly. This is so that the benefits meet current needs to support mental health, rehabilitation, prevention etc. so it is important that this is made clear to employees.

Moxham concluded: “We saw how quickly employee benefits providers pivoted to offer support for Covid during the pandemic and, while this was an extreme situation, providers are constantly evolving their products to reflect employee and employer needs.

“Ensuring employees appreciate the employee benefits they are offered goes hand in hand with sentiment towards their employer as a whole. Organisations who clearly demonstrate that they care about their staff by offering appropriate employee benefits are more likely to earn the loyalty of their people.