Rewards & Benefits

Many employees assess potential employers not just on salary alone but on the rewards and benefits packages adding extra value to their employment.

We assist you in making choices for your business to enhance the packages on offer without necessarily increasing the cost to your business.

Holidays

You may choose to recognise longer term service by increasing holiday entitlements when employees reach a certain number of years service. This is relatively low cost and gives a great incentive to employees who do place a lot of value of holiday time.

Sick Pay

Many employers only operate with Statutory Sick Pay and so you may wish to provide additional pay to employees who have a longer term service with your company so they receive full or half pay for a period of time.

If your absence procedures are being managed effectively this can be a great benefit to employees and would set you apart from many other smaller businesses.

Pensions

Currently any business with 5 or more employees should be offering a stakeholder pension but as an employer you are not currently required to contribute.

This will change in 2012 and employers should be speaking to us now to prepare:

• The Pensions Act will take effect from 2012 and will be gradually introduced depending on employers' size.
• All employers must offer a qualifying workplace pension scheme and automatically enrol eligible employees. Those who do not must enrol staff into the system of personal accounts, which will be launched to provide access to a lost-cost pensions vehicle.
• At least 8% of an employee's qualifying earnings must be paid into a pension, which is made up of 3% employer contributions, 4% employee contributions, and 1% tax relief.
• Staff will be allowed to opt out of schemes, in which case, employers will no longer be liable for paying employee contributions.
• Employers will be able to self certify that their existing workplace pension schemes meet the minimum requirements set out by the act

Bonus Schemes / Incentives

Performance related bonuses are a great way of motivating staff to help you achieve the goals for your business.

These schemes need to be carefully considered so that they do not need to be changed or withdrawn and ideally linking them to a strategic way of reviewing performance, such as an appriasal system, is a functional way to manage the schemes.

To consider if this is an area that would benefit your business then we are happy to provide a free session with an advisor to discuss.

Death in Service Benefits

You may want to offer employees a form of Life Assurance which provides their next of kin a sum typically linked to a multiple of their salary if an employee dies whilst in your employment.

These would need to be arranged through a reputable Financial Advisor, we work with partners who provide this service to our clients.

Medical Plans

There are a range of medical plans for a relatively low cost which allow you to give employees access to healthcare such as dental, optical and medical where they can reclaim money spent on treatments etc...

There are a number of plan providers and it can be difficult to know whether you are choosing a provider that is reputable and truly pays the benefits easily to your employees. We have partners who provide these services.

Reward and motivate and your business will benefit