Thomsons Online Benefits, the SaaS provider of global employee benefits solutions, is launching Spending Account Manager, the latest edition of its award-winning Darwin™ software, at HR Tech Europe, taking place on 24-25th March at ExCel London.
Spending Account Manager allows employers to provide employees with spending accounts, also known as reimbursement benefits, enabling them to claim back a variety of benefit expenses from an allowance through their mobile, tablet or desktop. This latest innovation in Darwin is in response to enterprises managing increasingly global and demographically diverse workforces creating a need to give more flexibility and control to their staff over how they use and access their benefits across any device.
“As organisations become increasingly global and with workforces now incorporating four generations of workers, employers are facing real challenges in developing reward strategies that motivate, engage and retain such a diverse talent pool,” comments Brenden Mielke, Product Director at Thomsons Online Benefits. “Flexible benefits strategies are now widely known and adopted in Europe, particularly in the UK, and forward-thinking employers are seeking to facilitate even more flexibility and choice around employee benefits. Online spending accounts are the perfect way to deliver this.”
“Whilst the concept of spending accounts is relatively new for European employers, in Asia Pacific they are widespread and extremely popular. Multinationals are finding them increasingly useful in offering comparable benefits across different territories. Equally there is a role for spending accounts to help employers tackle particular administration problems. For example, allowing employees to maintain their professional qualifications by purchasing accredited training courses,” continues Mielke.”
Often spending accounts are used as part of a benefits strategy to fulfil a lifestyle need, allowing the employee to use this benefit in the way most appropriate for them. For instance, a health and wellbeing account could see one employee using it for mother and baby classes and another for physiotherapy. Other common uses include personal learning, technology and gadgets, fitness, and travel accounts.
Spending accounts can also help employers in enabling staff to be properly equipped for their job. Examples of such vocational applications include professional skills and accreditations, safety equipment and uniforms.
“Over the last decade we have seen a surge in people accessing Darwin via tablets and smartphones. Employees now login to manage their benefits from multiple devices, not only during working hours but increasingly in the evening and at weekends. We have therefore created Spending Account Manager using the latest mobile design principles as it’s the epitome of the ‘on demand’ benefit. Employees can go to their lunchtime yoga class, photograph their receipt with their mobile phone and intuitively make their claim through the software, all before they get back to the office,” concludes Mielke.”
Thomsons will be giving live demos of Darwin™ Spending Account Manager at HR Tech Europe on stand 506 on 24-25th March at ExCel London.