Equality | Will benefit fairness or flexibility help retain and engage employees in the 'new normal'?

Is it a case of returning to normality? Or will a lot of people be having pandemic-related epiphanies about life and work?

If divorce rates are anything to go by, this might well be the case.¹ Uncertainty has caused many people to stay put over the past year, meaning a surge of pent-up resignations might well be on the horizon, especially where companies haven’t covered themselves in glory when it comes to caring for their people. So, how can organisations retain and engage employees; especially where people are more diverse, disparate and perhaps disillusioned than ever before? And, moreoever, where budgets are tight. There’s currently a trend towards benefit fairness, but when it comes at the expense of flexibility can it really be the answer?

There’s now a growing realisation that the ‘new normal’ - over the next year at least - might well be articulated by constant change. So, retention and engagement will ultimately require reinvention, not a series of steps to an exit from the pandemic as was previously imagined. It will require the kind of flexibility, reach and efficiencies that only technology can facilitate; especially where employee benefits products and services are concerned. And that flexibility should apply as much to the benefits themselves, as to the delivery mechanism.

The transformational effect of technology