From portal to experience: why benefits need to feel joined up

The challenge isn’t usually the benefits themselves; it’s the experience around them.

Employees don’t care about providers and portals. They care about how benefits can have a positive impact for them and their families. Bringing this in to focus as part of the employee experience comes down to three core elements.

Simple, relevant, engaging.

Simple

Bring benefits together in one place and connect HR, payroll and providers. Employees then fill in fewer forms, your data is more accurate and HR fields fewer “Where do I find this?” questions.

One reward manager we worked with simplified enrolment into a single, automated process. More than 67% of their workforce logged in during the first election window, far beyond expectations.¹ It was the same benefits but with a better experience.

Relevant

A new joiner, a returning parent and someone five years from retirement need different things. Personalised benefits, targeted communications and the ability to make choices that fit individual circumstances help people address what matters to them and their families. Helping employees access relevant support makes benefits a more meaningful part of the overall experience.

Engaging

Employees engage when they feel empowered. That means intuitive pathways to the right solution, the ability to make their own choices and authentic communication. The impact goes beyond benefits uptake. Gallup research shows organisations with highly engaged employees achieve higher productivity, greater profitability and lower turnover. Helping employees access support that is relevant to them can make benefits a more meaningful part of the overall employee experience.²

Start with the questions:

• What are the key moments in an employee’s working life?
• Which benefits matter at each of these moments?
• Where does the experience break down?
• What would make the next step obvious?

You don’t need to rebuild everything. Walk through your benefits as a new joiner would. Count the logins and note where you get stuck. A single landing page, consistent branding or better-timed communications can shift engagement. Joined up benefits get used, and used benefits deliver value. Research highlighted at the CIPD Festival of Work emphasised that organisations should focus as much on communication and employee feedback as they do on the benefits themselves, as even well-designed benefits can fail to gain traction if they’re poorly communicated.³

How we can help

MyWay is our flexible benefits platform. It offers one personalised portal for pensions, health, wellbeing and more, connected to your HR, payroll and providers, with a total reward statement that shows employees the full value of their package. It also helps you prepare for the mandatory payrolling of benefits in kind.

To talk through your own benefits experience, speak to one of our Mattioli Woods consultants [add contact details or link].

Sources:
¹ MyWay | Mattioli Woods

² Employee Engagement Solutions – Gallup

³ CIPD Festival of Work: Benefits engagement starts with communication, not benefits – HR and Benefits