At Manchester Digital, we like to conduct interviews with our members to delve deeper into their areas of passion within the dynamic digital and technology landscape of Greater Manchester. This week we're speaking with Warren Lunt from Circular Benefits.
What types of employee benefits do startups and small businesses most struggle to provide?
Employee benefits can sometimes be a minefield for small companies as they don’t always know how to approach the market and select appropriate partners.
The key to implementing benefits for small businesses in our opinion is to keep it really simple and to build up a programme over time by learning what is important to your employees.
We often find when speaking to SME’s that they have a lot of pretty cool stuff going on for their employees already but what’s important is that it all needs to exist in a single centralised employee experience, so it can be understood and so that it is accessible in and out of the workplace.
The advantages of working with a platform like Circular Benefits is that we can facilitate all of the things they don’t necessarily have the resource to procure or manage. For example SMEs typically find is difficult to implement salary based benefits, sometimes due to limited administrative capability and sometimes due to not having the tools or knowledge to set things up compliantly and execute the campaigns effectively.
Lifestyle discounts are another challenge, they can be deemed a fairly simple offering but in reality, it’s a big task to engage and manage a array of leading brands ensuring they keep pushing engaging and relevant content to employees.
Beyond this you can get into more sophisticated offerings which of course can be really great for employees. Platforms offering flex benefits are an example of this, they put more choice into the hands of the employee but they come with a cost and they typically don’t touch smaller businesses, so there’s really a lot to consider and we totally get it, it can be off-putting.
As I said at the beginning, we are firm believers in keeping it simple and developing a benefits proposition gradually over time. All that needs is a simple cost effective foundation to start the journey from and some knowledgeable and personable support to get things up and running. Every small business has different needs, so a one size fits all solution just won’t cut it in this marketplace and this is the basis of how we have built our business which, touch wood, seems to be resonating so far.
How can a strong benefits package help a startup or small business stand out to job candidates compared to larger, more established companies?
In today's dynamic workplace, employee well-being has taken centre stage as a key driver of organisational success.
By leveraging an employee benefit platform, businesses can effectively address these priorities, enhance employee well-being, and foster a positive and attractive work environment.
The employee benefit platform industry faces a critical issue however, concerning the limited provision of services and support for small and medium-sized enterprises, with a predominant focus on larger enterprises.
The struggle to adequately serve SMEs stems from various factors, including:
• The high costs to implement and maintaining traditional benefit platforms
• Limited customisation options to address the diverse needs of smaller organisations
• A lack of dedicated support during the onboarding and implementation stages
Addressing these challenges is imperative to ensure that SMEs can access and leverage employee benefit platforms effectively, enabling them to:
• Enhance their competitive advantage
• Attract and retain top talent
• Foster employee well-being and satisfaction
Ultimately contributing to their long-term success and growth
Having a benefits programme in place demonstrates that you are an employer of choice and a caring organisation that cares for the welfare of their employees and improves their lifestyle and wellbeing.
It shows you have an effective employee communications process in place that supports a positive company culture and if executed properly can boost an employees take home pay by making their money go that little bit further.
Benefits executed well can have a significant ROI.
What benefits tend to be the most impactful for improving employee retention at early stage companies?
It’s really down to what’s important to your employees. To most people, family is important, health is important, money is important, as employers we have to extend support not limited to these areas.
The basics such as competitive salary and generous pension are essential provisions, private healthcare and employee assistance programmes are tangible and welcomed offerings too and we often see these in place when we engage with a business albeit with limited awareness of their value.
On top of that and in our world of ‘keeping it simple’ we see a mix of salary benefits, lifestyle benefits, financial & health wellbeing support and reward and recognition as some basic pillars to build a compelling and simple benefits proposition around. If you get those basics in place and you have a scalable platform within which they are facilitated, you can evolve your offering over time.
The environment is an interesting one too as increasingly it is becoming important to employers and their employees this is an area we have big plans to expand on. How can we incentivise and encourage employees to do their bit for the environment?
What administrative or cost burdens do small business owners face when trying to research, implement and manage employee benefits
There’s a lot going on in the employee benefits marketplace that’s for sure, we’ve been in the sector for 25 years and we’ve seen a lot of innovation and change which is a great thing.
The challenge with that is that it can get very confusing for the employer to decide which route to take. With many full complement platforms, flex platforms, well-being specific or financial well-being specific platforms, retail benefit plug ins the list goes on, it’s not easy to make sense of and on top of that it can start to seem very expensive especially when you begin to combine multiple solutions.
As an example, we are definitely finding that there’s a requirement for better support for parents and caregivers or better support for those going through menopause. The great thing about this is that there’s loads of services, tools and resources out there but if you research and source them independently it will take an age and cost you a fortune.
It makes sense to speak to an expert who has full visibility of the market and can help aggregate the right offerings into a single platform, this is the core of our offering, one platform, supplier agnostic, tailored to the individual needs of the business. We never wanted it to be a one size fits all solution as it just doesn’t work for small businesses with very particular needs.
From your experience, what advice would you give founders of early stage startups on choosing and implementing the right benefits package for their team?
As we always suggest, try to keep it simple, listen to your employees, get the core pillars of a compelling benefits offer in place, leverage a simple but adaptable platform you can grow with and continue to deliver a quality experience from there.
The alternative to that is that it can quickly become a Frankenstein of expensive offerings that don’t provide for a great joined up employee experience and once you get to that stage it can become difficult to unravel.
Some pointers a startup may want to consider when exploring benefits include:
• Listen to the team and gather feedback on what employees actually want
• Budget effectively, don’t waste money on benefits that are not valued or offered purely as a tick bo
• Ensure the package offers choice and is relevant to all team members
• A healthy workforce is a happy workforce so where possible provide things like EAP, wellness tools, screening
• Communicate effectively so that employees understand the benefits and why they are being provided.
Thank you Warren!
To find out more about Circular Benefits click here.
