Employee engagement deficit?

According to the Independent Employee Engagement Task Force ‘the UK has an employee engagement deficit’ and they estimate that only one third of UK workers are really ‘engaged’ with their job roles.
Before we look at the implications of this, we need to define what we mean by ‘employee engagement’. In general terms, an employee’s engagement with their job is the extent to which they feel satisfied by their role, committed to it and whether they feel they have a voice within their organisation.
Although these are not easy concepts to measure, academic research points to huge benefits for organisations that engage successfully with their employees.
The Employee Engagement Task Force states that 94% of the world’s most admired companies believe their efforts to engage employees have created a competitive advantage. They also state that the UK has low levels of employee engagement compared to rival economies and that this could be a factor in the UK’s worrying productivity deficit. No wonder the Corporate Leadership Council has shown that 70% of business leaders believe engagement is critical for their business and some argue that it is a key element to the success of any organisation!
Employee engagement impacts hugely on almost every area of working life, for example:
Engaged employees take an average of 2.69 sick days per year while disengaged ones take 6.19 sick days.
According to Hay, companies with high levels of engagement have staff turnover rates that are on average 40% lower than companies with low engagement. This results in lower recruitment and training costs as well as increased organisational stability.
Although less easy to measure, there is now compelling evidence that increased employee engagement results in increased employee performance (but not the other way around!).
It is clear that increasing workforce engagement can positively affect your company turnover, flexibility and productivity.
There are many ways to engage staff, the obvious one is salary but this is only one factor. Employee benefits however offer an alternative and very tangible way to incentivise workers. At Enjoy Benefits we have a wide range of employee benefits that businesses can choose from, all designed to motivate, engage and retain your dream team.
Happy employees equals happy clients.
Employers can offer many or just a few benefits. Offering childcare vouchers and a bike to work scheme will make a world of difference to the health and finances of a lot of people in the organisation. A company that wants to become the “Carlsberg” of employers might choose to offer all of our benefits financed through salary sacrifice so that their employees will save money and there will be no cost to the business. Employees can then choose to exchange some of their gross salary for the products and services that they need and value. They might choose to take childcare vouchers, the bike to work benefit, a gym membership, an annual car parking pass, a mobile phone, a “dining out” card, cancer screening or even a new car fully maintained, insured, taxed and serviced and paid for through salary sacrifice.
Our benefits enable employees to get a remuneration package worth thousands of pounds a year more, at less cost to the business!

Urban myths about employee benefits…..
A lot of growing companies think that employee benefits are only for large corporations, that they will be difficult to implement and costly to the business.
Well the answer to that is NO, NO and NO!
Employee benefits will help every size and type of business from a small family company, SME’s through to charities, public sector bodies and large corporations. We work with clients of all shapes and sizes.
We manage every aspect of offering the benefits so it is a simple and straightforward process for the business to offer their employees more. We provide launch emails, promotional leaflets that answer key questions and we have our client team on hand to answer employees specific questions. We provide salary sacrifice letters and schedules so HR and payroll will always know who is taking which benefit.
We offer a benefits and HR portal too. This enables employees to log in to their own personal account and select the benefits they value. It then shows them an annual rewards statement which is comprised of their salary plus the value of the employee benefits they are taking. The portal also allows the HR department to check at a glance, who has engaged with all the benefits offered.
The portal can also be used as an HR hub or central storage point for the companies key documents such as personal contracts, employee handbooks, company policy documents, health and safety procedures through to holiday entitlements and holiday forms.
By offering employee benefits as well as salary, staff will be rewarded and the company can make significant savings in employers national insurance payments.
These savings are possible with all sizes of company. One of our clients in Manchester had 10 employees and 2 directors. They decided to offer their employees the option of taking childcare vouchers, bike to work benefit and annual car parking passes through salary sacrifice. This resulted in employees getting more and the business saving nearly £800 in employers NI payments.
A bigger company with 137 employees launched 8 benefits including childcare vouchers, bike to work, cancer screening, car parking passes and cars. They saved over £20,000 in employers NI.
So back to the question of employee engagement….. in our opinion, as long as a business employs staff, there is no reason not to offer staff benefits. They are proven to increase staff retention, motivation, health, engagement and productivity. AND save the business money… not only through reduced employers NI payments but also in recruitment advertisements, training, HR issues and employee engagement deficit issues!!
To find out how you could make a world of difference to your employees, to your bottom line and to the productivity of your business, call us on 088 7315 today and speak to one of our Client Team.