Zurich Looks at Employee Benefits: What Do People Really Value?

 Covid certainly prompted many insurance brands to rethink their entire workplace model. Fewer large offices with hundreds of staff inside, more hybrid arrangements, or co-working spaces nearer to where people actually want to live, rather than city centres. The pandemic also changed attitudes on healthcare, with more employees realising that fast, accurate diagnosis and treatment is a much more valuable benefit than a gym membership or theme park ticket discounts.

Here are some insights from Zurich;

“The Future of Employee Benefits: 2030”, a new report Zurich Integrated Benefits produced in collaboration with The Future Laboratory, focuses on five key benefits pillars of the future and their respective micro trends, which are brought to live with first-person, day-in-the-life future scenarios:

• Personalization: Employees will seek personalized benefits that cater to their individual needs, prompting corporations to prioritize human-centric benefits that are meaningful and tailored to fit the person, not the role.
• Wellbeing: Health and wellness will no longer be a siloed benefits perk, and prevention will take precedence over cure.
• Empowerment: Employees of 2030 will prioritize autonomy and seek to be empowered by their employers, while future benefits will focus on nurturing employees’ careers and life-long ambitions to future-proof their lives beyond their current job roles.
• Impact: Organizations will increasingly step up and act as forces for good in society. Future employees will rely on their employers to educate and empower them for a purpose-first future.
• Technology: In the future, benefits suites will utilize emerging technologies to streamline employer offerings, providing personalized, data-driven insights and choices in one place for employers to easily select and utilize.

“Concepts like ‘9-to-5’ and ‘one-size-fits all’ have become increasingly obsolete in the new world of work,” says Wendy Liu, CEO Zurich Integrated Benefits and International Life. “In the future, in order to remain competitive, employers need to embrace a holistic, personalized, purpose and technology-driven approach to benefits. 2030 is closer than we think, so now is the time to act and know we can meet tomorrow prepared.”

The report is available for download here.