Employee benefits consultancy
Given the importance and the significant cost of delivering employee benefits you will want to be certain that you receive the best guidance and advice available when putting a programme in place or making adjustments to an existing arrangement. This means expertise at every stage of the planning, implementation and management process.
- Audit - A thorough knowledge of corporate governance in relation to delivering benefits, knowing what your obligations are and where to look to identify the risks to the business.
- Strategy - The ability to listen and understand your business objectives and help you translate these into a benefits strategy.
- Implementation - Independence allied with deep market knowledge that allows us to find you the most appropriate financial products and suppliers for your programme.
- Communication - A wide range of communication competencies from online educational programmes to personal one to one advice that allow your employees to make the most of the benefits you are paying for.
Our experience at Truestone Employee Benefits has shown time and time again that to create an effective employee benefits programme each and every stage is as important as the next.
Audit - reducing the risks through corporate governance
Our aim is to provide high quality benefits for your employees and protection for you in delivering your benefits package. Protection that ensures you not only meet your ever changing legal and regulatory obligations but also that both you and your employees receive value from the investment you commit to the benefits programme.
As employee benefits programmes become more diverse and complex we recognise that programme management is also often dispersed amongst a wider set of employees and external partners. This makes it all the more important to create a formal audit process for your existing arrangements.
With many years of experience to call upon Truestone will provide you with a thorough audit of what you have, highlighting any areas that pose a risk to the business or a barrier to effectiveness. We can examine all of the following aspects in detail:
- Legacy issues from past schemes
- Overall scheme design and its fit with business objectives
- Scheme management
- Scheme administration
- Investment performance
- Competitiveness of benefit providers
- Take up of benefits by employees
- Effectiveness of benefit communications
Truestone will then advise you on processes and procedures that will maintain a good level of governance into the future and measures that will allow you to monitor success.
Developing an effective strategy
Our most important task is to listen to you. We don’t presume to understand your specific issues and objectives. Every client is different and we need to ensure that the solution we recommend for you will be tailor-made to work in your particular circumstances.
Our employee benefit consultants will work with you, helping you link your benefits package to your wider business goals. You will find that our consultants bring many years of experience to the task, able to provide you with expert levels of knowledge across a wide range of individual benefits.
At this stage we can undertake peer group benchmarking on your behalf. Developing your benefits strategy in isolation may bring a significant risk. By finding out what your industry and your key competitors for staff offer, you will be in a stronger position to determine your own approach. We are also able to conduct research amongst your own staff to help you know what is important to them.
Implementation - sourcing the solution
Whatever benefits you wish to offer, from pension schemes through to group life assurance and health cover to child care vouchers, Truestone has the expertise to provide you with a robust and reliable solution.
The advice you receive from Truestone is entirely impartial and independent. Importantly for insured solutions, we are not tied to the products of any specific pension provider, insurer or investment company. This means we are able to consider all the providers in the market and make our recommendations based purely on what is most appropriate for you.
At this stage in the process, through our knowledge and experience, it is often possible for us to realise major cost savings for your benefits programme, both in terms of the advice you require and in the insured solution. However, we also understand enough about the market to recognise when a ‘good deal’ is a false economy which will result in poor service. Our role is to unburden HR professionals and remove risk for trustees and companies alike.
We can advise you on any of the following benefit areas:
- Defined contribution pension schemes; personal, stakeholder and NPSS
- Occupational pension schemes
- Group life cover, critical illness cover and income protection schemes
- Group healthcare solutions
- Employee assistance programmes
- Flexible benefits and total reward statements
- Voluntary benefits
- Charitable giving schemes
Communicating the benefits
The best, most innovative benefits strategy will count for very little unless it is communicated clearly and consistently to the people that matter; your employees. In fact, particularly where pension provision is concerned failure to provide information, guidance and possibly advice may be seen as a failure in your business's duty of care to employees. That is why Truestone has developed a menu of communication options, from online to face to face meetngs that you can use to meet the needs of your employees whatever their circumstances or their location.
Employee communications should never be treated as an afterthought once the benefit scheme is ready to be put in place. Getting real engagement and buy-in from employees involves thorough strategic planning. It is relatively easy to tell people the details of a scheme but very much harder to communicate effectively and create engagement.
In putting together a communications strategy you will need to consider the best methods of reaching your employees and also the timing and tone of the messages:
- Do they have access to a computer or is it better to provide hard copy information?
- How engaged are employees generally and to what extent do they pay attention to company communications?
- What level of staff turnover do you have - this will affect how often communications are required?
- How are they geographically dispersed?
- How knowledgeable are they about financial matters?
- Are there different groups that need to be communicated with discreetly?
Truestone has invested in developing online tools that provide information on benefit choices. We will help you use these tools in combination with group seminars covering a wide spread of topics from introducing the benefits package to specific information on retirement planning. Where you think it is appropriate we will also provide consultants to deliver one to one counselling to make sure your employees understand, use and value the benefits they have.
For the complete employee benefits service call Truestone Employee Benefits on
0845 362 8426 or email employeebenefits@truestone.co.uk.
