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Total reward strategies must develop in line with the profile of the modern workforce, including part-time and flexible-working employees, as well as a greater generational diversity.
Employers should offer benefits around career and personal development, wellbeing, and recognition to attract and motivate a wide range of employees.
Employers need to first assess what is important to employees to then target their total reward packages to the workforce.
There can be no doubt that the modern workforce looks and works differently to that of even just 10 years ago; there are more part-time workers and five generations of employees in any one workplace. The Office for National Statistics' (ONS) Labour force survey, published in March 2017, found that in the three months to January 2016, there were 8.52 million people working part time, 10,000 more than the previous year.
There are also more fluid job needs. For example, portfolio workers will carry out projects for multiple employers at the same time, while boomerang workers, those that leave an employer and return after a period of working elsewhere, are also present in some organisations. But have employers' total reward strategies changed in line with this new landscape?
Changes to the workforce
There is more change to the make-up of workforces now than ever before, says Martha How, principal at Aon Employee Benefits. "That's partly a response to the shape of the population and all the things that go with that; it is a macro-economic change, which is reflecting itself in changes in the workplace," she says.
One example of this is the considerable number of older workers in the workplace. In the UK in 1992, ONS figures showed that 5.5% of those aged 65 or over were in work. In 2016, that number had risen to 10%. "Older workers do have slightly different demands," says How. "More will be willing to work part time or flexibly, so that brings up a headline for a lot of the changes in the workplace, which is that fewer [employees], by proportion, are traditional workers, working nine am to five pm, five days a week."
Individuals are choosing to work in different ways, and employers need to be ready for that....