Stay competitive | How to benchmark employee benefits

You’ve been tasked with reviewing your organisation’s employee benefits package and benchmarking it externally to see how you compare against the market. If you’re new to this process, it might seem a bit daunting. In this article, we share some ideas on how to gather external data for benefits benchmarking.

What is benefits benchmarking?

Benchmarking allows you to regularly review your benefits, ensuring they stay competitive, appealing to employees, and compliant with relevant laws and regulations.

1. Existing network

A good place to start is by asking members of your existing network for some help to compare your current employee benefits against those offered by other companies. You could use LinkedIn this this but be cautious as some companies may have policies against sharing information online. Most of us connect with others in the same industry so it could prove useful to reach out to them individually to obtain some data relevant to your industry.

2. Online forums

Business or HR forums offer a wealth of knowledge from others who have sought answers to the same questions as you, so we suggest searching for similar topics first. If the results are outdated or do not provide the information you need then post a new thread. Before you post, think about what specifics you are looking for, e.g. are you looking to compare a single employee benefit like maternity pay, or compare against companies within the same sector? This way the results will be more meaningful than just asking anyone and everyone in HR what benefits they offer. It might take a little while to generate sufficient responses though.