5 benefits of an employee perks platform

‍Employee benefits and perks in the modern workforce

Companies understand the importance of offering unique employee benefits and perks to attract and retain top talent. More and more employers are utilizing an employee perks platform to distribute these perks. 

Employee perks are any additional benefits or rewards that employees receive beyond their base salary and traditional benefits such as healthcare and retirement plans. 

Every year seems to bring more requests from employees and more challenges to distributing the perks program. HR teams have struggled to keep up with the pace of today's rapidly changing world. The recent economic downturn, inflation, and the pandemic have left HR staff feeling overwhelmed and overworked. 

Regrettably, the administration of employee benefits has become even more difficult in recent years. Thus, the need for an employee perks platform has emerged in the industry.

Legacy software systems designed to make things easier are now outdated and cumbersome. Employees require an array of individualized benefits to reflect their diverse lifestyles. Additionally, a piecemeal approach to modernizing benefits has resulted in the need to manage multiple vendors. As a result, HR staff are experiencing point-solution fatigue.

An employee perks platform is a software solution designed to streamline employee benefits and make them more accessible to employees. Companies can offer their employees a range of perks and benefits that can be customized according to their preferences and needs.

5 benefits of using an employee perks platform

1) Increased benefits utilization

Moving the administrative responsibilities to an employee perks platform like Forma can alleviate the burden put on HR leaders. Zoom’s HR team faced a problem many HR leaders are familiar with these days when evaluating their employee wellness program. Employees were struggling with vendor fatigue and the existing programs had a low engagement.

Partnering with Forma, Zoom expanded the pre-existing wellness program. They included an array of Lifestyle Spending Accounts focused on the company's five wellness pillars: physical, mental, financial, social, and work. By consolidating their perks and wellness programs with Forma, they saw utilization across all flexible accounts from 10% to 83%.

2) Support for HR admins

According to a 2021 SHRM survey of global HR leaders, more than 40 percent of respondents reported having too many projects and too few staff to complete them. Another recent survey of 1,000 HR leaders found that 98 percent of them said the pandemic has transformed their role, and 70 percent stated that it has been one of the most challenging years of their careers. Despite these challenges, HR staff must continue to perform their traditional responsibilities.

When Allbirds moved their benefits to Forma, they saw an increase in support for the administration of their HR perks program.  Alex Park, Total Rewards Analyst at Allbirds, said, “I would confidently say since I've been here. "We've had no issues with Forma. The team did a really great job at making the transition for me when I first joined Allbirds. The support team has always been there. They are always quick to reply in terms of communication – that's probably the strongest strong suit of Forma and what I love about working with Forma.” 

3) Save money

Typically if an HR Leader wants to procure a new benefit, that will be an added cost, budget item, or subscription. Lifestyle Spending Accounts usually aren’t put in place with a net-new budget. Instead, they relocate existing program spend to help eliminate inefficiencies.

From an ROI perspective, companies can expect to eliminate wasted funds on subscriptions or services that are poorly utilized. They will also save on administrative costs and get an increase in employees’ perceived value in the benefit funds.

Companies willing to take a hard look at their existing benefits offerings, their costs, and their utilization. They will see that they can actually reduce their overall budget by moving to an employee perks platform like Forma. Employees will perceive it as an improvement because they receive more agency over how funds are spent.

4) Smoother employee communication

A big challenge with multiple point solutions is that each has different places to go, processes, and software to learn. Flipping your benefits and perks model over to lifestyle spending accounts means fewer places to go.

Obviously, this makes it easier to improve utilization numbers and streamline communications about the programs. An added bonus: relative to traditional FSA providers, modern spending account providers have software that was built for the 2020s. The Forma platform has a keener understanding of consumer-grade design principles so you’ll have fewer support questions.

5) Attract and retain the best employees

A singular employee perks platform is a proven method to provide more competitive benefits offering without increasing the budget. This approach also increases employee advocacy and nudges employees toward their own development. These benefits give them something they truly find meaningful. So Lifestyle Spending Accounts absolutely have a positive impact on company culture, attracting talent, and keeping engaged employees.

Bonus) Robust reporting and analytics

An effective employee perks platform should provide robust reporting and analytics. This makes it easier for HR teams to track employee benefits usage and monitor funds.

When it comes to the expected use of a given benefits spending account, specifics vary widely. However, you should prepare contingencies in the event things don’t go as planned.

What if your employees don’t use the account as you anticipated? Or the reverse: You want a plan in place if your accounts succeed beyond your projections (i.e., your employees all max out their accounts). Details are important not only in helping you assess the effectiveness of your programs but in adapting your budget if needed.

Solid data management and insights become extremely valuable – they allow you to trim waste without affecting benefits that your employees use and value.

An employee perks platform like Forma is a great solution to provide a perks program that you know employees will use, and will save employers more time and money.

For more information about Forma’s employees perks platform, <span class="text-style-link text-color-blue" fs-mirrorclick-element="trigger" role="button">schedule a consultation</span> with one of our experts.

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