The Benefits of Employee Benefits
The Benefits of Employee Benefits
I read an article last week about Timpsons, the Shoe Shop which, assuming it’s accurate, is the absolute goal in terms of Employee Benefits. According to Timpsons they employ over 5,500 people in the UK and Ireland with just over 2,000 shops. Like the Emirates Group they call their employees their Timpsons ‘family’. They are all currently furloughed on full pay until the crisis is over. In addition to being able to do this for their ‘family’ the company own holiday homes for employees to use and run a weekly lottery of 1000GBP for employees. If an employee gets married, they get an extra week of paid leave and 100GBP bonus. The company employs Mental Health Counselors, has a ‘Hardship Fund’ and a fund to help employees learn to drive. 10% of all positions are reserved for ex-offenders in a bid to help with countrywide rehabilitation efforts. These are but a snippet of what the company offers its frontline employees.
Once this is all over, and all being well, Timpsons will have retained a full, and trained workforce capable of being fully productive from day one of recommenced operations. They may have had to make some concessions in terms of benefits, but the employee base will be grateful for what they have, no doubt. It means that Timpsons can concentrate on making up for lost revenue and not have to balance other concerns, such as re-recruitment, running at half capacity and potentially having lost Senior Managers as a result of pay cuts.
As we have moved into April and a brand-new financial year, companies will be making the difficult decision not to pay dividends and bonuses this year. Several big companies have made unprecedented moves, such as to cut Senior Management salaries during this time in order to retain staff who cannot go out to work.
What is your Business Continuity Plan? Did you have one? How are you coping financially? What will you do in a few months’ time when you have no trained staff left to do the work and yet demand is increasing back to pre-pandemic times? Did you make the choice to diversify?
When this is all over would it be worthwhile to relook at your employee benefits packages, perhaps even your salary and grading structure? Timpsons is able to furlough at full pay because they have a strategic and robust employee benefits package in place which means that money is constantly set aside for the ‘benefit of their employees’. How can you re-balance your operations to ensure that there is a more equitable balance between frontline employees and Senior Management; meaning that Senior Management take less of a hit on their salaries in the future should the case arise again and that there is money set aside for emergency situations?
Have we not, amidst this crisis, really understood who the ‘key workers’ really are? If that is the case, let’s look at better ways to reward them for their efforts.