The Chapman Consulting Group co-hosted an energised reward leaders gathering with Aviva in Singapore . We were joined by a fantastic group of regional and global reward leaders to discuss the Compensation and Benefits challenges faced today across a wide range of industries. Representatives from a variety of organisations were present including Aviva, Barclays, Fullerton Holdings, Jones Lang LaSalle, AIG, Great Eastern, First Data, Covidien, Mars, Visa, Sealed Air, Cargill, BHP, Unilever, International SOS and Rolls-Royce.
The hosts gave a fantastic presentation on Aviva and two pilot projects they are rolling out in Singapore.
The first, a wellness program entitled ‘Base Camp’ was themed around overcoming adversity through mindset changing experiences aimed at empowering and engaging employees. By exploring the metaphor of pushing boundaries through seven peaks, they were able to align employee outcomes with overall corporate objectives. For example, mental well-being was shown to lead to a more focused team and physical health resulted in higher productivity. This initiative has been a huge success to date as measured by employee engagement surveys.
The second pilot was around a new flexible benefits scheme which was a hot topic all afternoon. The introduction of a flexible spending account aligned to a work-life balance philosophy was deemed a huge success, both in terms of empowering employees as well as from a long-term cost perspective. We then heard from Rolls-Royce on their evolving approach to benefits. This involves building flexible benefits policies for new and recent hires, whilst freezing those of staff with longer tenure for a set period of time before encouraging them to adopt the new schemes. This has generated a cost saving on new hires. Some of the difficulties faced by these new strategies included stakeholder buy-in, employee communication and data measurement, which the group concurred were always a challenge. Again, success was evident with a decrease in cost per employee and a reduction in employee calls to the HR shared services centre.
The group then shared some wide-ranging examples of their own innovations and advancements around flexible benefits programs. One such best practice example came from Great Eastern and their “life program” where employees have the option to participate in a health risk assessment. They are divided into three categories and set individual targets around health improvement. If they achieve these goals, they earn ‘life points’ which equate towards flexible benefits. They can use these to purchase insurance, additional services and other perks. It was a cost neutral initiative and they have had an 80% uptake to date, which exceeded initial expectations. Another area of particular interest centered on tweaking initiatives across the region.
The lens on healthcare and wellbeing is certainly becoming more prominent in emerging markets. The approach to China was highlighted as critical as they become more liberal and sophisticated. Some organisations are now taking risks to formulate new initiatives as they plan their expansion into this geography. It will certainly be interesting to see how different organisations adapt to these emerging markets from a benefits perspective. Overall, the approach to benefits was split across the group between a more fixed versus flexible solution. Ultimately it comes down to the company culture, the value system and vision. It was a great group with some really interesting sharing of best-practice approaches across a range of industries and we look forward to bringing the group together again soon.
