Less than half of Singaporean staff satisfied with workplace benefits

According to the 2017 Willis Towers Watson Asia Pacific Benefit Trends Survey, 63 per cent of employers believe their staff highly value their benefits package - while in reality, only 45 per cent agree that they meet their needs.

According to the survey, while employers and employees agree that benefits packages should include healthcare benefits that enable staff to manage their own health (89 per cent and 72 per cent respectively), employees are also demanding for more diversity and choice, which is currently lacking or missing.

Audrey Tan, head of health and benefits, Singapore, Willis Towers Watson, commented: "At a time when workplaces are expected to be more flexible, we still see a majority of Singaporean organisations failing to offer their employees diversity, choice and flexibility with their benefits. One size certainly does not fit all."

"While only one in three employees receives this currently, staff who receive greater diversity and choice report higher satisfaction. This finding is particularly crucial for organisations, as it highlights the clear opportunities for how employers can improve employee satisfaction, engagement, retention and attraction. It is, however, encouraging to see that more organisations in Singapore are looking to expand the diversity in their offerings in the next three years," she added.

Additionally, the report revealed that 35 per cent of employers in Singapore don't know their spending on benefits; while over a quarter (26 per cent) spend 20 per cent or more of payroll on benefits. These findings are worrying, as these companies will likely mismanage their budgets if they don't reassess their package offerings, particularly as the industry expects the cost of medical benefits to rise over the next three years.

Meanwhile, some of the non-traditional well-being benefit offerings that employers are looking to integrate are activity-based programmes (21 per cent), behavioural or emotional health management initiatives (23 per cent), lifestyle risk and chronic disease management programmes (18 per cent respectively), and financial well-being (10 per cent).

As organisations in Singapore change their offerings and their approach to benefits packages, they also have to reconsider cost: "One way organisations can overcome this is by measuring the effectiveness of their health programmes by evaluating them on a regular basis. To do this, companies need to design an ecosystem around data, where they collect, analyse and share results to measure effectiveness, and, in turn, their employees' view of the value of the benefits offerings," added Tan.

Against this backdrop, employers in Asia report that the top priorities for their benefit programmes over the next three years are to focus on changing benefit designs to manage costs and influence behaviours. Additionally, the majority of companies in Singapore (86 per cent) are looking to evaluate and measure the success and effectiveness of their programmes in the next three years.

The survey found that organisations plan to do this using medical claim data and benchmarking information to inform decisions or changes; financial and nonfinancial metrics to measure the impact; and sharing health and well-being programme performance metrics with the C-suite, senior management, or as a corporate reported metric on a regular basis.

The 2017/2018 Willis Towers Watson Asia Pacific Benefit Trends focuses on high-level trends around benefit strategy, benefit design, health and wellness, retirement plans, benefit delivery and benefit cost. This year's survey was conducted between April and June 2017, and received responses from over 1,141 large Asia Pacific employers, including 96 in Singapore.

This article was first published in Human Resources.