Attracting and retaining top talent is more challenging than ever. Benefits play a crucial role in shaping the employee experience, but how do you know if your offerings measure up to industry standards? Benchmarking provides the insights you need.
Best-of-breed benefits technology makes this process easier than ever. By centralizing enrollment, utilization, and employee feedback data, HR teams can quickly spot gaps, uncover opportunities for improvement, and make informed decisions that align with organizational goals.
Beyond standard comparisons
From matching to differentiating
Most companies focus on matching industry averages. Leading organizations, however, use benchmarking data to strategically exceed them. Technology tools can highlight emerging trends, revealing where benefits can provide a competitive advantage rather than just parity.
The competitive advantage
Benchmarking insights help employers attract top talent by offering benefits that truly stand out. Data from benefits platforms can also support wellness initiatives and overall employee satisfaction, ensuring your offerings resonate with a diverse workforce.
Steps to effective benefits benchmarking
Define clear objectives
Start by identifying the “why” behind your benchmarking effort—whether it’s to improve retention, enhance recruiting, manage costs, or ensure compliance. Benefits technology helps structure these goals, track progress, and provide visibility across your organization.
Gather and analyze data
Leverage multiple sources of information: industry surveys, government databases, and your own internal benefits data. Best-of-breed benefits platforms make it easy to analyze utilization, costs, and employee engagement by job role, geography, or department, reducing manual work and improving accuracy.
Engage employees
Employee perspectives are critical. Use digital surveys, focus groups, and feedback tools to capture satisfaction and preferences. Analyze enrollment and utilization trends in your platform to understand how employees are interacting with their benefits.
Develop an action plan
Identify gaps and prioritize improvements. Technology can help model different scenarios, evaluate potential cost impacts, and determine the most effective enhancements to balance competitiveness with financial sustainability.
Implement and monitor
Communicate updates through employee portals, dashboards, or automated notifications. Benefits technology allows for ongoing monitoring and reporting, ensuring changes are effective and providing data for future benchmarking efforts.
Key considerations in benchmarking
Cultural and generational sensitivity
Workforces are diverse. Benefits expectations vary across generations and cultural backgrounds. Technology can segment data and insights to tailor offerings and communications for different employee groups.
Legal and compliance requirements
Maintaining compliance across jurisdictions is complex. Benefits technology helps track regulations, deadlines, and reporting requirements, reducing administrative burden while mitigating risk.
Financial sustainability
Analytics tools within benefits platforms allow HR to track trends, forecast costs, and make informed budgeting decisions, ensuring benefits remain sustainable without compromising employee satisfaction.
Employee-centric insights
Continuous feedback is essential. Using your platform to capture surveys, track utilization, and monitor engagement creates a loop of data-driven insights that keeps benefits aligned with employee needs.
Turning benchmarking into a strategic tool
Data-driven decision making
Benchmarking results inform total rewards strategies, helping HR leaders allocate resources effectively. Technology provides the dashboards and reporting tools to make these decisions confidently and efficiently.
Measuring ROI on benefits
Track the impact of benefit changes on engagement, turnover, and productivity. Insights from benefits platforms allow organizations to connect investments in employee programs with measurable business outcomes.
Communicating value
Even the most competitive benefits are only effective if employees understand and use them. Technology-driven communications—personalized portals, alerts, and dashboards—help translate benchmarking insights into meaningful messaging that employees can act on.
Conclusion
Effective benefits benchmarking is more than a simple comparison—it’s a transformational strategy. By leveraging best-of-breed benefits technology, organizations can benchmark continuously, stay competitive, and deliver an employee experience that drives engagement and satisfaction.
Regular benchmarking, powered by technology, ensures that your benefits strategy evolves alongside workforce expectations and industry trends, keeping your organization ahead of the curve.
