2008 set to see growth of healthier workforce initiatives

Healthier workforce initiatives are set to be the big winners in 2008 whilst in 2007 most employees were keen to save or gain extra cash perhaps in response to credit crunch fears, according to Aon Consulting, a leading pension, benefits and HR consulting firm in its first UK Benefit Tracker.

Aon Consultingís UK Benefit Tracker looks at all the benefits included in Aon Consulting clientís flex plans and their subsequent take-up by employees. Perhaps not unsurprisingly the findings show that the top three flexible benefits were traditional ones ñ Pension, Private Medical Insurance and Holiday Trading. However, the rise in take up of private medical insurance is noticeably higher than previous years with one in three employees choosing it. As a continuing trend, it perhaps shows a growing lack of confidence in the NHS in addressing medical needs in a timely fashion.

Although yet to break into the top ten flexible benefits for UK employers, healthier workforce initiatives such as wellness accounts, which are subsidised employee accounts that support the undertaking of healthy activities, had rarely been seen in flexible benefits schemes before 2007. Now already the take-up of these benefits has in a short space of time risen to just outside the top ten and their popularity is expected to grow even further as more employers look to include it in schemes as a result of growing pressure from employees.

Another interesting move is that the percentage of employees selling holiday as opposed to buying has increased substantially over 2007 with 38% of employees who selected this benefit now selling and 62% buying. This represents a marked shift from previous years where the ratio was 80:20 in favour of buying holiday. With a worsening economic outlook in the UK, it seems that this could be causing employees to increase their take home pay by selling holiday as expectation is that annual pay awards are likely to be low in 2008.

A new entry to the top ten flexible benefits is the use of discounted Retail Vouchers. Following the introduction of discounts through pre-paid Mastercard and Visa cards, rather than paper vouchers, the convenience of this new mechanism coupled with the removal of the need for employees to select the breakdown of the benefit of their voucher spending at the beginning of the year has stimulated the demand for this benefit. Interestingly, the take-up of this benefit is now above that of Critical Illness and Personal Accident insurances, pointing to employees looking to save money rather than increase financial protection.

Commenting on the latest figures, Gareth Ashley-Jones, head of flexible benefits at Aon Consulting, said:

ìIt is interesting to see how the pressure is growing on employers to provide employees with more health-related benefits. We are yet to see any break into the top ten, but in 2008 we expect this to change. Although, it is disappointing to see that the position of the bikes benefit through the Governmentís Cycle 2 Work scheme remains stubbornly outside the Top 10.



ìIn 2008 we could see some of the more traditional benefits usurped by new flexible benefits such as those focused on charities and the environment. For example there has been a recent trend this year towards environmentally-based charities such as the Woodland Trust which enable employees to understand the size of their carbon footprints and take action to reduce this impact with some companies providing matching support to their employees.î