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July 2010

Staffcare removes the barriers to flexible benefits

Staffcare, the employee benefits software company, has launched flexeasy; a new plug and play benefits portal for communicating and administering core and flexible benefits for businesses of all sizes.

Phil Hollingdale, Founder & CEO of Staffcare, says “Flexible benefits (flex) make sense for most businesses, especially in today’s economic climate when businesses are looking to contain cost and pay rises are off the agenda but recruitment and retention is still a priority.  Too few businesses have implemented flex because it has been too expensive and too much hassle.  It’s also been difficult for Corporate Advisers to sell and manage due to the bespoke complex nature of most flex schemes.” 

Less than 10% of companies offer flexible benefits and most schemes have been implemented via the larger Employee Benefit Consultants in organizations with 1,000+ employees. Whilst a lot of money is spent on feasibility and design, often tens of thousands of pounds, the reality is that most schemes look very similar.  Research highlights that the main barriers that prevent companies implementing flex are: cost of implementation; cost of administration; complexity of administration and getting approval for the business case.

Staffcare is removing these barriers by pre-packaging the most popular flex products and providers based on the commonality that it has seen from the many schemes implemented on its software.  A “plug and play” approach means that benefits are chosen from a library of standard options from fourteen of the most popular flex choices, preferred providers are selected based on their popularity and suitability for the SME sector, and a fully working benefits portal with all associated content and communication materials can be operational within a matter of days.  This approach removes the need for costly, time consuming design consultancy and lengthy implementation timescales.  A typical flex project takes anywhere between 3 and 9 months to complete, but this can now be reduced to 3 to 4 weeks or less.

The pre-packed benefits include childcare vouchers, bikes to work, dental cover, health cash plan and private medical insurance.  Clients can load any existing core benefits data into the portal and produce personalized total reward statements for all employees.  Staffcare sells its software via Advisers and Consultants and offers a white labeled platform that can be branded for each of its partners and their corporate clients.

Hollingdale says “this product is ideally suited for businesses of 50 to a few hundred employees who are willing to compromise some flexibility for affordability.  As well as getting a portal to communicate and manage flexible benefits, clients can also use the software for HR self-service and as an HR intranet for publishing handbooks and other data.  It won’t suit every business and those that have more complex requirements can be accommodated with our scalable customized flex software, known as Staffcare Corporate, which we license to many of the UK’s leading Employee Benefit Consultants. 

Joe Swanson, Managing Director at Company Rapport Ltd, says “we use the Staffcare software to deliver a benefits portal for the majority of our new clients.  This helps us enhance the services we provide to employers and their employees and is key to our communication strategy.  The new flexeasy product allows us to take our proposition to another level and provide employers with even greater value from their benefits package.  Flex is the HR professional’s holy-grail in employee benefits and this system brings it into the range of the SME community – it allows us to target a much wider flex audience.”

 Further information and a demo booking form can be found at http://www.flexeasy.co.uk

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