If you’re not looking after your employees, somebody else will!

Aoife O'Donovan

If you're not looking after your employees, somebody else will! Brightwater's Aoife O'Donovan discusses how employers will have to provide additional compensation, expand benefit packages and improve the overall employee experience in order to retain talent in 2018.

With a dramatic increase in our economy in the last year, a growth of 5.1% and an expected rise of 4.2% this year, we naturally see a rise in salaries across Finance, HR, Sales and Marketing, IT and Engineering. As the economy continues to improve and employees have more job options, employers will have to provide additional compensation, expand benefit packages and improve the overall employee experience.

Employers need to be mindful of this and not just assume that their staff are going to stay with them if they are aware of market trends around them. This may be tackled by increasing overall package as well as base salaries. The types of benefits that can be introduced into an overall package may be discretionary bonuses, healthcare and pension contribution. Some undemanding benefits, but equally important to some people may be free parking, bike to work schemes, subsidised gym membership or even flexitime. For contract staff on the other hand, offering a completion bonus will decrease the risk of an employee leaving for a longer term or better paid contract for perhaps very similar work. Employees won’t stay with a company out of the goodness of their heart.

The overall employee experience is crucial, this is becoming increasingly apparent with my clients and many employers across the country recruiting for Compensation & Benefits Specialists and Employee Rewards Relations Specialists as they come to realise the importance of benefits and looking after their employees. Introducing incentives such as wellness programmes, team bonding exercises or free healthy snacks. Employees need to go home and say they like where they work, they can be doing the best paid job in the world but if the environment in which they work isn’t favourable, they simply will leave. 

Brightwater’s Aoife O'Donovan - Consultant HR