The WTW 2025 Benefit Trends Survey highlights key actions organizations are taking to manage costs and continue to deliver a high-quality employee experience:
57% are focusing on reallocating spend to get more value from current investments
87% plan to place more emphasis on an employee-focused benefits strategy
76% plan to use personalized nudges to influence behavior and enhance the employee experience
Even with the best intentions to invest in employees through thoughtfully designed total rewards, leaders frequently encounter familiar challenges that can stand in the way of progress.
Outlined below are common hurdles organizations encounter, accompanied by strategies to maximize the return on your total rewards program investment.
The question isn’t if change is coming, but how you will support your people through it. You can’t manage disruption without dialogue. People are at the center of what you do, and maintaining experiences that motivate employees to thrive, be resilient and continue to deliver impact for the business is critical.
Undoubtedly there will be scenario planning, assessment of programs and policies, and modeling of plan design changes occurring.
While there could be a tendency to pull back during uncertainty, now is the time to double-down with renewed energy toward listening and communication. WTW’s employee engagement data is already showing employees feeling less confident to bring their voice to work, less recognized and less inspired (WTW High-Performance-Employee-Experience norm data).
Giving employees the opportunity to have input on their total rewards preferences, and what trade-offs they are willing to consider, gives you actionable insights to navigate disruption successfully. Understanding their needs informs what to prioritize for better outcomes and makes them feel part of any decisions taken, critical for maintaining trust.
Keeping a pulse on what matters most for employees, positions you to be faster and more nimble to address issues and risks that are identified through the data. It also helps you make decisions in real time, communicate with the right people at the right time and ensure your employees continue to deliver the impact required to drive organizational success.
If you’re worried about not being able to meet employee expectations in your total rewards strategy, not having an open dialogue with them isn’t going to help. In reality, withholding open communication can exacerbate challenges by negatively impacting both engagement and motivation. Additionally, it eliminates the opportunity to collect valuable insights that could validate or challenge existing assumptions when it comes to total reward preferences.
Recognizing employees’ voices allows them to feel like they are being heard and invested in, while providing insights that allow you to:
Increase awareness and appreciation of your total rewards programs with a renewed focus on improved communications
If you have a competitive total rewards program, but your people don’t see the value and it isn’t driving employee impact, you may not have a total rewards problem. You likely have a listening and communication problem.
Lets think about total rewards through a marketing lens:
Technology is a great enabler for reaching the right people, with the right information at the moments they need it. Using digital platforms, such as WTW’s Embark+ employee experience communication platform, can help you integrate employee listening with personalized communications to encourage desired behaviors and motivate people to act in real time.
To win in business, you need to win with people. Without the right people and the right people delivering impact, organizations are at risk of under-performing. Any people program, policy or initiative that links employee performance with the value they deliver to the organization should always be important to your C-suite.
To get attention from your leaders, there are several ways to frame your total rewards optimization conversations:
Employees are your advocates, ambassadors and customers; total rewards needs to be a strategic choice and valued investment to achieve the business priorities.
Unless your total rewards programs have a positive impact on the employee experience, they aren't delivering the value needed.
Maximizing the impact of your total rewards investment doesn’t have to mean spending more on your programs.
If you have mechanisms in place to access insights that tell you what your employees value, like a total rewards optimization survey, you can start identifying opportunities and gaps that can be closed with minimal investment.
You then use those insights to craft a communication strategy and approach that will raise awareness and appreciation of everything you have to offer. Effective communicatios should be personalized, relevant and give employees reasons to care by highlighting how your robust total rewards offerings are there when they need them the most.
Understanding the needs of your employees, optimizing what's available based on employee preferences and communicating in a meaningful way helps to create the total rewards impact that truly matters.
Hear real-world success stories on how WTW creates an impact with clients to optimize total rewards that align with what employees really want.
