The assets of your business and the impact of NEST

What do you consider the most important assets of your business? There are many answers to this question including intellectual property owned by the business, the relationship with your clients and the reputation of the business. However, for most medium sized businesses, all of these potentially valuable assets are underpinned by one often ignored asset..your employees.

Your client relationships are defined by your employees, the reputation of your business is either damaged or enhanced by your staff, and although business strategy and guidance comes from the directors of a company, many of the ideas and concepts relating to implementing these strategies come from the individuals within your business.

So, what can a medium sized company do to motivate, encourage and retain the right staff. The right working environment is important, as well as an appropriate salary level. However, an interesting survey from insurer Canada Life highlighted the importance of employee benefits when employees look for prospective employment.

When asked,"How important do you consider benefits when choosing to accept a job?", 68% of employees said it was an important factor, 27% were neutral about additional benefits and 5% considered additional benefits to be important.

When employees were asked about the most important benefits, the top 5 were Pensions, Income Protection, Holiday Allowance, Life Assurance and Basic Health Insurance.

However, another important factor which will have a major impact on how all businesses look at their employee benefits is the introduction of NEST. This video from Steve Bee highlights the need for employers to look at the benefits they provide to their staff. The new auto enrollment legislation has an impact on 1.1 million employers. Around 100,000 workplace pension schemes are currently in place. This means that 1 million employers will be in a position where they may need to put in place a workplace pension in the next 5 years.

So, if you are an owner of a business, there are two important questions..

1) Do you review your employee benefits to ensure they are designed to encourage great staff to join your business, and motivate and retain your existing staff to stay?

2) Are you ready for the changes in law which will have an impact on your business within the next 5 years?

Chris Daems,
Principal Financial Solutions.