What are the major problems faced in employee benefits management?

What are the major problems faced in benefits management?

Answer:

Managing employee benefits is a critical part of the entire compensation policy. The problem faced in employee benefits management is that benefit management costs a lot. But then it is often taken for granted by the employees.

There is a dilemma of finding the right balance of benefits and cash compensation, and this dilemma is an on-going one. Whether the benefits are meeting the needs and expectations of the employees and their dependents are subjective and cannot be accurately accessed.

There is no scientific way of ascertaining its impact on factors such as employee satisfaction and employee retention or productivity for that matter.

Employees should be made aware how the organisation manages benefits and there should be transparency so employees are satisfied to some extent. Like for Compensation, Benefits too are benchmarked by organizations and implemented keeping the market practices and trends in view. The key to leveraging the investment made by organizations on benefits can be got by adequate communication making employees aware of them.

It includes, providing clarity on how to apply for and claim benefits, as well as hold road-shows show-casing the benefits and what the employee can avail of. It focuses on to remind the employees that they are part of the total compensation package.

Making the employees empowered and aware of policies is another one. Most large and medium sized organizations manage compensation and benefits through state-of-the-art HRMS (Human Resource Management Systems) and the corporate intranet portals. Employee can enrol on-line for the benefits, ask queries, look up the policies and review the outstanding and balance status of the various benefits. They can view deadlines, apply for the various benefit claims and track reimbursement status on-line. This brings a lot of empowerment to the employee as well as awareness of the total benefits that he/she and their dependents are eligible for.