Companies in Asia Pacific are seeing a major gap between the amount of money they spend on employee benefits and the value they get from them. That was one of the key findings from a new report by Towers Watson, which polled 1,145 organisations across 20 countries in Asia Pacific. The report highlighted more than four in 10 employers said they spend more than 20% of payroll on benefits.

However, despite the material spend on benefits, only 16% of employers thought benefits are highly valued by employees. “Employers across Asia Pacific spend significant amounts of money on their employee benefit programmes.  But many struggle to derive full value from that spend,” said Chris Mayes, director, benefits optimisation consulting, Asia Pacific at Towers Watson.

“From our experience working with clients, we find that those employers who regularly engage their employees in their benefits – either through seeking employee feedback or communicating regularly – tend to see better value.”

Indeed, companies which communicate their benefits effectively were four times more likely to state their benefits were highly valued than those who did not communicate them well (20% compared to 5%). A similar effect was seen among companies that take employee insights into account when determining which benefits to offer.

“The number of organisations that said their benefits were highly valued is three times more for companies that take employee insights into account (18%) compared to those that do not (6%),” the report stated.

According to the survey respondents, annual leave and health/medical care remained the most prevalent benefits, whilst risk benefits (life insurance, accident insurance) and retirement benefits were also found to be popular among them.

See: Hiring Remote Workers? Here are 5 Considerations

Source: Human Resources Online