Employee benefits and technology trends report 

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Key employee benefit tech trends

Employee benefit programmes and the teams that deliver, manage and report on them have been thrust into the spotlight, with increased C-suite attention. The importance of providing a globally-consistent employee experience has also grown exponentially, accelerated by the pandemic. Wellbeing was unsurprisingly a key focus in terms of support and funding, and investment in employee benefits and technology increased across the board. However, organisations still have significant work to do when it comes to maximising their use of data and analytics.

Never before have organisations reported such year-on-year changes

  • 85% making changes to their benefits offering in response to the pandemic
  • 80% reporting a change in the benefits their employees are using
  • 72% spending more on benefits per employee
  • 60% increasing investment in employee wellbeing
The COVID-19 pandemic accelerated plans to centralise HR for 67% of organisations.

Employee benefits and technology trends

Have you kept your team connected, engaged and supported? Learn more across our tech trends content:

Full report

Get an in-depth look at the latest HR, benefits and technology trends.

Executive summary

Get a snapshot of the trends in our digestible summary.

Infographic

A bite-sized overview of the key findings from this year's research.

HR teams to focus on data analytics capabilities

Most organisations made changes to their benefits in response to the pandemic, with more than 7 in 10 increasing spend overall. Yet with this increased cost, comes more scrutiny—88% of HR and benefits teams have seen more involvement from the C-suite. Our findings show employers struggled with utilising data to prove how the changes they made impacted employees. A fifth of organisations aren’t using employee data at all in their reporting, and those who are face several key barriers:
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A bar chart showing the top blockers employers face when it comes to using employee data to report on employee benefits, including concerns around the storage and use of employee data, too many data sources and lack of time on the HR team.
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