3 Tips To Find the Perfect Total Rewards Solution

You invest quite a lot into your benefits program. But do your employees know it?

Last month, I wrote about the importance of revealing your employees’ “hidden paycheck” through a total rewards solution — a fully integrated online platform that provides each employee with a complete view of their entire benefits and compensation package. This is especially important as the war for talent continues.

Finding and hiring the right talent is hard enough. And it’s expensive. After all that hard fought work, you want to retain as many of your current employees as possible. That’s why a total rewards solution makes sense.

With a total rewards solution, you can show your employees exactly how much you are contributing to their health coverage, retirement accounts, voluntary benefits, and tax-advantaged savings accounts, like HSAs. Some of the more robust and flexible solutions will even display the money you’re helping each employee save thanks to free on-site parking, fitness center access, regularly catered meals, and more.

When you don’t communicate these important aspects of your benefits and compensation package, your employees are, quite frankly, more likely to look for opportunities elsewhere. It’s simple behavioral economics. Benefits matter to all aspects of the employee experience and contribute directly to workplace satisfaction.

But you must do more than simply send a total rewards compensation statement. You’ve got to find a holistic solution — one that is capable of displaying your unique combination of benefits in a way that is intuitive and easy for your employees, with access year-round.

When considering a total rewards solution, consider the following three attributes.

INTEGRATED

Most total rewards solutions claim to be a one-stop shop. But, look under the hood. If it isn’t fully integrated with your larger benefits administration platform, employees will get easily frustrated. Worse, they may not use your portal at all. Providers who use third-party systems may offer single-sign-on (SSO) capability but still require the user to go back and forth between sites, resulting in poor utilization rates and lower engagement overall.

PERSONALIZED

Benefits are personal. Make sure your solution allows you to configure the interface to only show content applicable for each employee. For example, you may speak one way to Gen Zs but use other language with Boomers. Depending on the stage of life each employee is in, you might prioritize one type of benefit (e.g., retirement) over another (e.g. tuition reimbursement). You also must ensure that employees are only seeing benefits that are available to them based on their status or tenure.

CONFIGURABLE

Total rewards solutions can be “customized” or “configurable.” The first requires a programmer to write new code to facilitate changes in content or presentation. Configurable solutions, on the other hand, allow someone with no technical expertise to edit text, change labels, re-order elements within the interface, and much more. Solutions that aren’t configurable will cost more in change order fees and require longer implementation timelines.

To learn more about these attributes and others, read our new e-book, “Seven Attributes of a Totally Awesome Total Rewards Solution.”