Now, let's dive into how companies can deliver benefits and compensation smartly, and transform employee experience. By doing so they can give workers the sense of purpose and significance that they crave, unlocking dormant human potential, and taking productivity and profitability in the right direction.

How companies are missing the mark

Companies across all industries are losing out by negating the importance of employee experience. Deloitte's 2017 Global Human Capital Trends report found 80% of executives feel staff experience as being important or very important.  However, only 22% of those surveyed feel their respective companies are good at building a unique experience for everyone. Worse still, nearly 60% said that their companies aren't well prepared to address the employee experience challenge. Benefits and compensation should be their first port of call.

While many companies will have a detailed strategy covering compensation and benefits, its value can be lost at a stroke if it is not well communicated to employees. For example, everything related to non-cash perks and benefits is often communicated to staff during onboarding and is then forgotten. In addition to not knowing all the benefits they receive, employees rarely know the true monetary value of those programs.

Having employees contact HR if they have a query about their compensation and benefits creates additional work, taking up valuable time and discouraging many from even enquiring. It is in the company's interest to heighten employee experience by ensuring staff are well informed and understand the full value of their compensation and benefits. That means all data and information should be communicated in an accessible, transparent and attractive way.

What can be done

The 2019 Deloitte Global Human Capital Trends report summarized the problem succinctly. "Organizations must do a better job of explaining their rewards to their workers," it read, stating that only 18% of respondents to its survey believe that their companies have a "very transparent" model to communicate pay information.

Transparent, clear, personalized information on benefits and compensation is no act of charity. The modern employee expects that at a minimum, and may not look too kindly on receiving any less.

With an advanced digital platform, employees can see all benefits and compensation, including non-cash perks, in one place, with self-serve access putting the power in their hands. They can access the data wherever and whenever they want. That digital approach can enable mobile access to the information, which is increasingly expected by millennials, who now make up the largest proportion of the US job market.

Ultimately, it is in everyone's interest for employees to squeeze the most out of their compensation and benefits, given that it is costing the company either way. With personalized information on all compensation and benefits, they can understand the full value, and what they gain is then likely to be converted into higher productivity in their workplace tasks.

The results

There is much to be gained from switching to a digital benefits and compensation platform. The use of a  personalized communication channel will strengthen the relationship between the company and employee, resulting in employees feeling a greater sense of purpose and significance.

Those efforts at improving employee engagement are proven to pay dividends. According to an APQC employee engagement survey, employee engagement heightens a company's ability to attract talent, improves work quality and boosts staff members' satisfaction with the work itself. And doing all of this digitally is essential to gaining and maintaining a competitive edge. Deloitte reports high-performing organizations to be six times more likely to use data and analytics to understand rewards preferences than lower performing-counterparts.

But digitization of benefits and compensation is only the beginning. Once that technological step has been made, companies have access to data and analytics which help to track employee engagement. That way they can review and evolve their benefits and compensation strategy to iteratively improve employee experience based on significant and measurable data.

Ultimately, user experience will be vastly enhanced if employee experience is taken seriously, and prioritized. If employees feel valued, through their compensation and benefits, that will flow into what they produce, which will eventually reach the customer. With all parties more satisfied than before, the business will have every opportunity to thrive.

Perry Doody is Chief Product Officer at CompTrak, a Compensation Management Software provider based in Toronto, Canada.