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Top UK companies win awards for employee benefits strategies
Added: (Mon Jul 23 2007)
Bank of America, National Express, McDonald�s Restaurants and Siemens are among the many winners at the Employee Benefits Awards 2007.
Amanda Wilkinson, editor of Employee Benefits, said: �Strategy around employee benefits has certainly now come of age. No longer is the management of perks consigned to a far and distant corner of the human resources department. It is a subject that is now taken seriously by senior management, not only within the HR department, but also at board level.�
This is apparent among the entries to the Employee Benefits Awards 2007. In one particular case at Qinetiq, winners of the �Most effective all-employee share scheme strategy�, the chief executive took time out of his hectic schedule to front up a series of presentations to staff about the new all employee share schemes, which were being launched alongside the flotation of the technology company.
Elsewhere, at National Express, winners of �Most effective benefits strategy for organisations with more than 1,000 employees�, management recognised that benefits were a key component of an HR strategy designed to reduce staff turnover and boost employee engagement, both factors which impact on productivity and, in turn, income and profit.
These are only a few examples of how benefits are being used to help implement corporate strategy and achieve long-term business goals.
A number of new categories, such as �Benefits team of the year� and �Most effective employer and adviser partnership�, have been added this year to help celebrate the work that the benefits team and their advisers have put into preparing a benefits strategy. The human resources reward team at the Royal Bank of Scotland Group (RBS) scooped �Benefits team of the year� for how they maximised cross-functional resources across the bank�s departments in order to implement a new pension scheme to sit alongside the RBS Group final salary plan and provided for the new plan within its flexible benefits package RBSelect. The RBS Group also won �Most effective employer and adviser partnership� along with advisers Towers Perrin, for work on the new pension scheme.
�Congratulations must go to all those that made it to the final shortlist and let us join together to celebrate the worthy winners,� said Wilkinson.
Details of the 2008 Employee Benefits Awards will be announced in October 2007.