Employers in Africa are at a crossroads on their benefits strategy

The events of the recent past have redefined many things about the way we work. It’s forced employers the world over to confront how they define the workplace, how work gets done, and how they value success. Importantly, many are placing the employee experience at the centre of their strategies.

In Africa, this brings with it several challenges, most prominently that of the underlying infrastructure to support such a shift. However, it also poses a unique opportunity for employers to leap forward — as such, employers in Africa could be at a key crossroads when it comes to their benefit strategy.

Today:

• Almost four in 10 employers in Africa not only have a strategy but one that they use to differentiate themselves from their competitors.
• Two-thirds use improved employee wellbeing as a top measure of success for their benefits strategy.
• African employers plan to enhance benefits across the board:
  • 44% plan to add flexibility and choice
  • 52% support for mental health and 44% for financial wellbeing
• Over four in 10 employers (42%) said that they look to understand employee wants and needs as a top priority. Hand in hand with this, listening strategies are coming up as an emerging focus.

What’s driving the change in benefit strategy?

Today, the main workforce challenge facing employers in Africa is stress, burnout and mental health issues (Figure 1). Interestingly, in Africa a top concern is also the poor financial health of the workforce, as cited by 44% of respondents. This is a new concern that has sprung up for employees in Africa — an employer might decide to act by providing financial education courses, for example.

To what extent is your organisation concerned about the following within your employee population in the next two years?

Figure 1. Employers’ main concerns for their workforce

Objectives and success measures for employee benefits

Operational considerations and cost remain a focus when looking at key objectives for benefit strategies. Employers are still concerned about optimising cost and risk management and using internal resources efficiently.

However, when looking at success measures, nonfinancial metrics made a much larger showing (Figure 2). Employers in Africa, like their counterparts in the rest of the world, said that improved employee wellbeing was a top measure of success of their benefits strategy.

What are the key measures of success for your organisation's benefit strategy?

Figure 2. Improved employee wellbeing is the top measure of success for employers’ benefit strategies

Benefit programs

More than four in 10 employers in Africa said that they felt their core benefits package was market leading (Figure 3). This will become increasingly important with retention being a key objective of the benefit strategy — however, only 20% said that their broader benefits were market-leading.

To the best of your knowledge, how does the benefits package at your organisation compare with other organisations?

Figure 3. How the benefits package stacks up

African employers seem to recognise the gaps in their benefits provision as many plan to enhance benefits across the board in the coming years. Significantly, 44% plan to add flexibility and choice, 52% support for mental health and 44% for financial wellbeing.

The way forward

There are signs that African employers are starting to put employees at the centre of their benefits strategy; for instance, taking improvements in wellbeing as a key success metric. To build a truly employee-centric benefit strategy, employers will need to:

• Build a formal benefits strategy as part of the overall business strategy, supporting talent attraction and retention in an environment of tight labour markets, and undertake regular benchmarking. These exercises might be difficult in some markets where data are not easily available.
• Have a holistic approach to wellbeing, including not only physical wellbeing but also mental wellbeing, which requires a delicate approach to open a discussion as it can be seen as taboo, and financial wellbeing, which is more than a compensation and salary increase discussion.
• Consider broader benefits such as lunch vouchers, flexibility, and days off, with more focus as they might be a low cost, high impact investment.
• Listen to employees’ needs and wishes. Traditionally, employers are reluctant to open a wide discussion, however, to modernise the relationship with employees on the continent, this is a must.

Authors

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Melanie Birge

Head of Health & Benefits,
Central and Eastern Europe, Middle East and Africa

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Jeremy Povey

Senior Consultant, Health & Benefits, CEEMEA

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