Are employee portals the future?

If you have not already seen the Corporate Platform Guide published last week by "The Platforum" in conjunction with Employee Benefits magazine then I would recommend a read. It is in my view a comprehensive and accurate summary of the current market landscape for employee platforms. These are propositions new to the market where employees can access group  financial products, such as GPP and ISA, and financial information and guidance. A link to the publication is below:



http://www.theplatforum.com/files/Corporate_Platform_Guide.pdf

This guide contains my own interview on the experience of CSC, who were the first employer to offer the Scottish Widows "mymoneyworks" portal to our staff. But a year on how successful has this new proposition been and is there any possibility of it being the future delivery mechanism for pension provision in the UK?

The interest from CSC employees to date has still been centered around the GPP offering and the pension planning tool contained within the portal. We have had little take up on the cash ISA and internet savings account which we launched a year ago (a take up of approximately 80 employees out of a workforce of 7,000) and we will not know until the new year how many employees decide to pay into the equity funds ISA which we will start to offer from January 2012.

Bearing in mind it is easy for an employer to set up a GPP for its staff and the ISA industry is generally well understood and easy to access for individuals, why would an employer be considering offering such a platform? From an HR perspective this has, in my view, to do with your employer brand and overall benefits offering.

A company's EVP (employee value proposition) should take account of different employee segments (both from a generational and affordability viewpoint) and the varying needs in relation to benefits provision this brings. If trying to attract the best graduates in the industry will they be more interested in the company's pension provision or how they can affford to pay off their student debt in the first few years of employment? With auto-enrolment coming over the horizon will graduates see the benefit to them of the company's standard pension funding? Would it be better to provide a lower level of pension funding to start building up a retirement pot and a contribution into a shorter- term savings vehicle which can be accessed when they need it rather than being locked away until retirment?  This is all about ROI on your company's benefit spend. What will make your employees best appreciate the benefits package on offer.

However, a total flexible approach whereby each employee can decide how the company's funding is allocated to best suit their needs, has to be backed up by comprehensive financial information and guidance so that employees fully understand the impacts of their choices both in the short and long term. This is where the educational part of the employee portal with easy to read guides, interactive tools and case studies ("people like you ....") adds the real value. This enables the employer to offer cost-effective, tailored guidance to its workforce via technology, with additional face to face advice being concentrated towards those who have more complex decisions to make.

It is the continual investment in technology from the providers who are offering these platforms which will influence whether they become the future, or a fad of the time!

The picture is of myself with "mymo" the character embedded into the look and feel of the portal at our launch in 2010.