It's time to make benefits personal - The top three tactics

Understanding and defining the needs of different workforce generations is one of the biggest trends in reward strategy and has been for the past few years.

This is no surprise when Generation Y, the children of the late 80s and 90s, are set to make up more than 50% of the workforce by 2020. Their needs are different. They want a more flexible work schedule and crave recognition. As the age range within the workforce widens and demographics continue to shift, it creates increasingly diverse employee requirements. It’s clear that business’ long-term reward strategy will have to change in order to engage and cater to the needs of a multi-generational workforce.

But can you really decipher an employee’s needs from the year they were born in? The answer is of course no. It is not enough to group merely by generation when there are numerous factors that will influence individuals’ benefits preferences, including their gender, location and hobbies. By analysing our clients’ benefits take-up data, we can see that everybody actually wants a bit of everything – and at different times, irrespective of generation. Increasingly, you need to provide benefits that really mean something to employees as individuals.

By working closely with providers we have noticed three tactics the market has taken to move towards a more personalised benefits offering: