New research from global employee engagement company Reward Gateway has found that wellbeing, pay & benefits and recognition will be the top employee engagement priorities for HR professionals in 2018.
The research, which surveyed 565 HR professionals at Employee Benefits Live 2017, echoes two studies undertaken by Reward Gateway earlier this year. These studies found that companies are looking to invest in areas which UK employees have said are crucial to them, but don’t feel as though their employers are adequately providing: wellbeing and recognition.
As the top agenda point, the importance of wellbeing in the workplace was echoed in a study conducted by Reward Gateway in September 2017, which discovered an astounding 22 million British workers, or 7 in 10 employees (71%), have felt stress or financial strain in the last five years. Despite these numbers, the same research also found that a third of respondents said that their company currently offers no wellbeing programmes.
As with wellbeing, the importance of recognition cannot be understated. A study completed in May 2017, again from Reward Gateway, found that 59% of employees surveyed would rather work for a business with a culture where they received recognition, over a higher salary job. The significance of recognition is reflected by the fact that nearly half of employees (49%) surveyed admitting that they would leave a company if they did not receive recognition.
The full ranking of employer priorities in the recent study is as follows:
- Wellbeing (171)
- Pay & Benefits (86)
- Recognition (81)
- Open & Honest Communications (59)
- Leadership (42)
- Purpose, Mission & Values (40)
- Management (35)
- Job Design (20)
- Learning (20)
- Workspace (11)
Doug Butler, CEO of Reward Gateway says:
“The ten elements used in our survey are all key parts of building a successful relationship with employees and creating a more engaged workforce and culture – what we call The Engagement Bridge.
“The clear spotlight on wellbeing, recognition, and pay and benefits is something we saw at the beginning of 2017. By expanding our wellbeing offering with a new Wellbeing Centre, further innovating our continuous employee recognition solution, and strengthening our leadership in employee benefits, Reward Gateway’s employee engagement platform continues to increase its depth of solutions for HR. By addressing these issues head-on with our clients, we can all work to make the world a better place to work.”
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Paul Gray is an entrepreneur and digital publisher who creates online publications focused on solving problems, delivering news, and providing platforms for informed comment and debate. He is associated with HRZone and has built businesses in the HR and professional publishing sector. His work emphasizes creating industry-specific content platforms.
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