Hyper-personalizing compensation and benefits: 5 actions to take

Hyper-personalization is everywhere these days, and the workplace is no different.

Today’s employees need to be recognized as individuals in order to thrive, do their best work, and remain engaged. And HR leaders understand that a one-size-fits-all approach to compensation and benefits doesn’t best serve their people, or the organization.

Progressive employers are embracing an approach to benefits that’s hyper-personalized, leveraging rewards regarded as high value to their workforce.

What is hyper-personalization?

Hyper-personalization, as it relates to an employee’s experience and their market value, means creating an experience, compensation model, and benefits, tailored to their needs and preferences as an individual.

Why hyper-personalization matters

Traditionally, personalization in the workplace has included things like listening to feedback, providing career advancement opportunities, and recognizing achievements. While these remain valid pillars of a great employee experience, today’s workers want something more — and if they don’t get it, they’re likely to move on to other opportunities.

In today’s workplace, good practices around compensation are still motivators for bringing an employee onboard, but once they’re part of the team, how you recognition and reward them becomes a driver for employee engagement, well-being, and retention.

Compensation should not be the only reward in your toolkit. Other rewards benefits can include things that employees actually find meaningful. Among these are benefits that support mental and financial health, and perhaps most importantly, promote inclusion and a sense of belonging — often the most hyper-personalized and appreciated.

Employees who are offered hyper-personalized benefits are more:

• Engaged in the workplace culture
• Productive at work
• Invested in the organization’s success

Are you hyper-personalizing your employees’ compensation and benefits experience?

Here are five actions that HR leaders can take now to address their employees’ market value in 2023:

1. Go beyond compensation
   What we are paid has a short shelf life in our memory and little impact on engagement. And so, compensation (financial, benefits, or otherwise) is not the best way to think about personalized employee experiences. You need to look beyond compensation, at what makes people feel welcome, accepted, and included.To better engage employees — and keep them motivated— consider things that people will remember long-term, like the feeling people get when they are recognized, or when their potential is being realized in their roles. By offering a broad range of benefits, and innovative ways to deliver them, employees feel seen and appreciated.
2. Rethink traditional bonuses
   If a bonus structure is part of your organization’s legacy recognition structure and you need to maintain it, think about recognizing performance in a more personalized way. Consider how much more effective retention bonuses would be if they were tied to milestones or activities that kept them top-of-mind for employees, and broadened their sense of completion, engagement, and connection to the organization.
3. Incorporate a spectrum of compensation into everyday practices
   Compensation, recognition, and benefits are better understood and valued when they are part of practices applied widely and consistently across the organization. Instead of hanging your hat on monetary compensation alone, make it part of your organization’s practice to offer a broad spectrum of benefits, and embed them into the employee experience from recognizing micro-performance moments to encouraging team collaboration and development — any everywhere in between.
4. Be transparent
   An open and upfront approach about the importance and availability of hyper-personalized benefits is far more likely to make employees feel organizational support for their whole selves — their financial health, mental health, and overall well-being. Each of these elements have been dramatically impacted during the pandemic and now, the recession. By highlighting the benefits available, employees are more likely to take advantage of them, feel a greater sense of belonging and value, and be more engaged.
5. Ensure that your leaders lead by example
   One of the best ways to get at the hyper-personalization of really impactful benefits, such as belonging, is when leaders are seen as openly vulnerable and talk about them. By being the example, employees feel encouraged to mirror that behavior, also showing-up as their authentic selves – the most personalized of all benefits of being in a workplace.

The role of technology in hyper-personalization

To help hyper-personalize the employee compensation and benefits experience, HR leaders are leaning on technology to do the heavy lifting.

With the right platform, you can uncover and address the unique needs of your diverse workforce — providing them with choice in how they’re rewarded so that they feel recognized and appreciated.

Putting compensation and benefits diversity into practice

Among HR leaders, there is much talk around the new way to recognition and reward employees, but oftentimes, compensation and benefits is left out of the conversation.
<p”>By starting with the five-point action plan above, you can begin to examine and reframe how you address the market value of your people — by offering them hyper-personalized benefits that speak to them as individuals.

There is no greater gift than feeling recognized and appreciated, and this is one great way to ensure that you’re doing both for your people, and for your organization.

Talk to us for more ideas on how to identify and incorporate hyper-personalization into your employee experience.

Written by

by Hannah Yardley