Employee benefits revealed

CELRE has published its Survey of Employee Benefits and Additional Payments 2008.

Drawing on data from 543 separate organisations and covering more than 54,200 individual job holders, the benchmarking survey reports on a wide range of areas, including:

recruitment and retention;
employment conditions – annual leave, overtime, working hours and flexible working arrangements;
bonus payments;
flexible benefits;
pensions;
share schemes;
other benefits – medical care, relocation, etc;
company cars and car allowances;
shift working arrangements and payments;
standby and callout payments; and
contract staff arrangements.

CELRE’s extensive analysis reveals that:

employers of engineers report the greatest problems recruiting (92% of employers) and retaining staff (84%); employers of actuaries face the next highest levels of difficulty;
25 days is still the most common basic annual holiday entitlement with an average maximum entitlement of 28 days;
52.5% of employers have job sharing schemes in place - these are especially predominant in the public and voluntary sectors of employment;
Home-based workers are found in nearly 77% of organisations; within the IT Services business sector, home-based working is found in more than 88% of organisations;
bonus payments were received by 85% of directors (averaging 38% of salary) by 61% of managers (12% of salary) and 56.5% of other staff (7% of salary);
on average, benefits packages equated to 29% of salary for managers and 17% of salary for other staff;
average employer contributions to pension schemes were around 15% ( for final salary schemes) and 6-7% (money purchase schemes);
42.4% of managers receive a company car or cash equivalent - compared with 45.5% the previous year; and
around 65% of employers use IT contract staff - compared with 53% in 2006.

This survey represents an indispensable guide to HR managers wishing to benchmark their organisation’s benefits and other arrangements.

The Survey of Employee Benefits and Additional Payments 2008 is available to purchase. Please contact us for details.