- The UK’s first one-stop benefits offering providing the widest range of employee benefits in the market, to meet the needs of today’s multigenerational workforce
- Bringing together - for the first time - traditional employee benefits, consultancy services, financial education and tailored banking solutions through the workplace
Barclays today announces the launch of a new and innovative workplace offering to meet the employee benefit needs of its corporate clients. The solution – Barclays Beyond Benefits – is the first of its kind to bring together consultancy services, traditional employee benefits, share plans, financial education and banking solutions, all delivered through a single portal.
The solution is designed in recognition of the fact that for the first time in history, there are up to five generations in today’s workplace and that ‘one-size-fits-all’ employee benefits packages, designed by the Baby Boomer generation for Baby Boomers, are failing to meet the increasingly disparate financial and lifestyle needs of today’s multigenerational workforce and are missing the mark in particular for younger employees.
Barclays Beyond Benefits brings the best of Barclays and the best of the market to employee benefits. The solution is delivered through a partnership of Barclays Workplace Banking – the division of Barclays offering both standard and tailored banking solutions supported by personal bankers in the workplace – and Barclays Corporate & Employer Solutions (C&ES) – the division focussed on supporting businesses of all sizes to look after their most important asset - their people.
Financial Education
At the heart of Barclays Beyond Benefits is the principle of empowering employees to make better informed decisions and choices related to their own financial well-being. Accordingly, a foundation of Barclays Beyond Benefits is a financial education portal – the broadest and most comprehensive in the market. The financial education portal contains several hundred individual articles supported by numerous tools and videos, providing information on topics as wide-ranging as: day to day finances, understanding reward and benefits, family finances and money, love and marriage.
Designed to facilitate the practice of “Learn, Plan, Do”, the financial education portal draws on resources from across Barclays as well as insights from The Money Advice Service and independent journalists.
Informative and engaging, examples of articles included in the hub are: ‘Talking about money with your partner’, ‘The pros and cons of salary sacrifice’, ‘The true cost of a holiday romance’, ‘5 employee benefits that are a no-brainer’ and ‘Why you’re definitely not too young to start a pension.’ The videos cover topics as varied as inflation, compound interest and offset mortgages.
In addition to the financial education portal, Barclays can deliver a learning programme in the workplace comprising a suite of educational seminars tailored to employees across the different generations. The seminars cover a wide range of topics including saving and investing, getting on the housing ladder and will writing.
Workplace Banking
A unique differentiator of the offering is its ability to leverage Barclays Retail Banking credentials and deliver leading edge banking solutions directly into the workplace. Workplace Banking from Barclays, (also known as Barclays To You), provides a range of banking products and services including differentiated offerings that are tailored to an individual company. The banking solutions include: savings and investments (including ISAs), and mortgages. The products are supported by the presence of Barclays personal bankers and relationship managers who visit organisations to share information and provide hands-on guidance to employees.
Barclays recently announced that it has joined forces with Anglian Water to deliver a workplace loyalty savings scheme designed to offer an easy way for its 4000 employees to save while providing the opportunity to share in the growth of Anglian Water Group (AWG).
Consultancy
The consultancy services provided by Barclays Corporate & Employer Solutions are the starting point of engagement with a corporate client and include an audit of an employer’s current arrangements, employee research and the subsequent creation of a reward, benefit and savings strategy. The design phase involves C&ES working together with some of the best providers in the market to deliver solutions from the following range:
Workplace pensions and pensions auto-enrolment:
Corporate pensions platform provided through Aegon and Zurich as well as giving access to Barclays’ funds, the investment solution for which benefits from insights from Barclays’ Behavioural Finance and Quantitative Research team to create strategies better aligned with a member’s changing risk capacity throughout their working lives.
Clients also have to access to Aegon and Zurich’s auto-enrolment hubs as well as the independent auto-enrolment hub provided by Benefex, which uses its Enroller technology and surrounding service to support employers through the pensions auto-enrolment process.
Global Stock & Reward:
Barclays works with Solium Capital Inc. to provide a white-label version of the Solium Shareworks™ platform and administration services which include stock and cash plan administration; trustee services; participant dealing and nominee services; corporate dealing and custody; and financial and regulatory reporting.
Barclays Beyond Benefits offers numerous access points including online, through mobile phones and tablets, and face-to-face through interactions with Barclays personal bankers and employee benefit consultants.
Commenting on the launch of Barclays Beyond Benefits, Katharine Photiou, Head of Workplace Savings at Barclays C&ES said:
“Employee benefits have reached a tipping point. Our research shows that today’s workforce is made up of five different generations - each with different financial and lifestyle needs – and that current benefits packages are missing the mark, in particular for younger employees. If HR professionals (often part of the Baby Boomer and Gen X cohorts) do not have the needs and priorities of Generation Y in their sights, they run the risk of losing top talent and future leaders. However, the HR community holds the key – it needs to look in the mirror, recognise that packages must break out of the ‘built by baby boomers for baby boomers’ mould and then get into the minds of Gen Y employees. By doing this, packages can then be designed and structured to meet the needs of the future generations of talent.
“Barclays Beyond Benefits acknowledges this changing landscape. It is an innovative solution which recognises the modern multigenerational workforce through a modular system which allows employers to tailor packages to suit the differing needs of their employees – whether their focus be on saving for retirement, managing debts or building a house deposit.
“Central to the offering is the financial education hub, designed so that employers can enable their employees to make better informed decisions that will impact their financial wellbeing. The range of benefits available – the widest in the market and including for the first time, banking solutions – is designed to then help employees manage their finances in a way that suits them.
“Employee benefits have for too long been starved of innovation. The launch of Barclays Beyond Benefits is a hugely exciting development - it brings together the best of Barclays and the best of the market to address the challenges of relevance, engagement and retention facing today’s HR professional.”