Invesco has harmonised employee benefits across 16 different European, Middle East and African countries by utilising new technology provided by Aon.
Around 1,8000 Invesco employees will now use a single technology platform, enabling the company to shift paper-based administration to a self-service digital platform.
The scheme design ensures that country-specific regulations are followed in each area, but employees can see and transact with a single Invesco-branded website, enabling them to view, change and access individual benefit plan information.
Aon says this enables Invesco to save time and understand costs through clear reporting, driving better insights for both the business and employees. Invesco has historically used a paper-based system which had to to 30 spreadsheets. This meant reporting, managing or acting on change was slow and cumbersome.
Now, employees are encouraged to take action to support their own needs supported with relevant prompts and reminders. Employees also have access to a dedicated help desk, managed by Aon, which operates in seven languages.
The implementation began in May 2019, with Aon and Invesco have worked with each country’s benefit providers to manage regulatory complexities.
Alistair Fox, client director, online benefits at Aon, says: “In some countries, benefits and technology don’t go hand in hand. A multitude of pension schemes, medical processes or legislative rules can create enormous complexities when harmonising benefits for a single employer, yet on top of this some suppliers didn’t use online technology before.
“We’ve worked together to bring all participating vendors online, supporting their adoption of new methods. As much as the system has been a great success for engaging employees, the functionality of the process has improved dramatically too. We collate all employee benefit decisions to report to Invesco’s payroll and HR as well as benefits vendors. Everything is tracked and monitored for informing strategic improvements and reporting through governance meetings.”
Invesco’s head of benefits (EMEA)Tony Ark adds: “By using the new benefits platform, we’ve already seen major advances in efficiency and accuracy. Across EMEA, employee engagement levels have significantly increased with over 90 per cent of employees in each country engaging with the platform on a regular basis.
“As a business, we now have access to extensive operational dashboards for each country providing critical management information to help us understand exactly what’s working or not in each country. This also provides annual spend data to help drive our benefits strategy, so we can measure which benefits are popular or under-utilised and determine where to make strategic decisions that will better support both employees and the business.”