Top UK Companies Win Awards for Employee Benefits Strategies

A few examples of how benefits are being used to help implement corporate strategy and achieve long-term business goals.

(PRWEB) July 21, 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.

Notes For Editors:

• Employee Benefits magazine is a UK-based publication which launched in 1997. It is read by nearly 10,000 compensation & benefits managers and HR people specialising in reward in British organisations.
• Employee Benefits runs a number of information services - including the Employee Benefits Exhibition & Conference [LINK: http://www.employeebenefits-confex.co.uk/, the Employee Benefits Summit [LINK: http://www.employeebenefits.co.uk/event/index.html, the Employee Benefits Awards [LINK: http://www.employeebenefits.co.uk/event/index.html and http://www.employeebenefits.co.uk">LINK: http://www.employeebenefits.co.uk.