The HR World’s webinar, Employee Benefits: Then, Now and Next brought home the importance and value of giving employees choice in terms of how they are rewarded and recognised for their work.

Sponsored by Engage Health Group and with a panel comprising Engage’s Founding Director, Nick Hale, Kate Palmer, HR Advice and Consultancy Director at Peninsula UK and Alison Richardson, Director of HR Operations at Yodel, the webinar explored benefits from the starting point of how they had changed and evolved over the past decade.

There was clear agreement across the panel that choice was now highly important for employees in companies of all size. Straight forward pay, while still important in the context of the cost-of-living crisis, was not always as influential as the other reward options available. Not only that but the pendulum has definitely swung to put employees in the driving seat when it comes to what benefits should be on offer. Employee benefits are now very much tied to organisation values and it was interesting to hear that the atmosphere and experience of working for an employer was viewed as important as any particular benefit that might be offered to a candidate or existing employee.

The panel also noted that while technology was a good way of enabling people to access their benefits and as a way of communicating about them there was also a sense that organisations were forever playing catch up with technology – finding themselves ‘behind the curve’ almost as soon as a new investment had been made.

With diverse questions fielded from the webinar’s chat the session brought many learning points and an in depth insight into getting the most from employee benefits and designing a scheme that always delivers return on investment.

Follow up with questions we didn’t get chance to cover in the session: Q&A: Employee Benefits: Then, now and next