Credit Suisse: Connecting the Dots on Total Rewards

People often don’t value what they don’t understand. That’s why smart companies like Credit Suisse realize that it’s important to communicate the total rewards their employment provides to employees.

Employees know the net income on their paychecks, yet how much do they know about other valuable rewards they earn from their employer?

There are significant rewards that are part of their overall compensation employees receive that often go unrecognized… and therefore unvalued, such as: healthcare, life insurance, flexible spending accounts, retirement contributions, tuition reimbursement, adoption assistance and more.

These additional rewards contribute as much as another 30-50% of the total compensation package. However, if they aren’t effectively communicated, they just aren’t having enough impact in helping companies attract and retain the best talent pool possible.

So, is it the message… or is it the messenger? It’s actually both … as Credit Suisse learned.

Believing in the value that providing a total rewards snapshot to employees provides is one thing; for Credit Suisse, being able to provide that in an accessible, easy to use tool was critical.

Credit Suisse’s Story

Credit Suisse wanted a new communications tool to help “connect the dots” between the employer and employee value proposition by – thereby encouraging employee retention.

Credit Suisse set a goal of ensuring that the total rewards their employees received was recognized, valued, fully utilized by employees and working on their behalf to reinforce the value of employment. First, a little background on Credit Suisse:

• One of the top financial companies in the world
• Products include private banking, investment banking and asset management
• Requirements for a highly talented and sophisticated employee workforce
• Over 50,000 employees in 50 countries
• Benefits run around $1.8 Billion each year

While this level of benefit investment put them in the upper 75 – 80 percentile in terms of expenditure, satisfaction with those benefits was between 55 – 58 percent.

Past attempts to communicate rewards to employees in a generalized way failed to get the point across. This is why Credit Suisse evaluated approaches to help them do a better job of communicating the value of the total rewards compensation.

Credit Suisse decided to offer their employees an online personalized total rewards statement with the capability for them to easily update and change information, perform “what ifs” and thoroughly understand the total value of the rewards they received through continued employment at Credit Suisse.

They wanted a system that would encourage full participation in company rewards including targeted messaging, such as messages that encourage taking full advantage of 401K company contributions.

Credit Suisse set about identifying the requirements they wanted met with their total rewards platform and the standards they wanted in a vendor who would work with them to build a powerful customized HR total rewards solution.

Here are some of the highlights of their decision criteria:

• Their product needed to be easy to access, use and update and consolidate information from a variety of sources into a streamlined, single sign-on for employees
• Given the sensitive nature of the information involved and their corporate culture, they required a highly secure website
• Also important to them was the ability of the new system to smooth over communication differences among the vendors providing information and adapt to global regional differences.
• Oh, and they also wanted an attractive layout, information clarity and to be able to provide employees with analytic tools

The end game was to compile all rewards from the company’s various vendors into a logical online four-page total rewards statement for each employee – effectively connecting the dots between what the employee earns and to what extent Credit Suisse goes beyond the paycheck to contribute to the employee’s overall compensation package.

They needed a particular caliber of vendor to work with them that could:

• Offer best-in-class practices
• Deliver full-service modeling including future rewards value projections
• Provide a wide range of related product & service options
• Demonstrate a bias toward frequent communication
• Go through multiple prototype reviews
• And, be easy to work with

Credit Suisse’s Success

Credit Suisse found their vendor and together proceeded to develop a few prototype reviews, which allowed their leaders to make changes, as they deemed necessary. Their system was created, using global files to fulfill the needs of their offices in each country.

The system allows employees from work or home, via any browser, to log onto their profiles and view their total rewards statement. Instead of just base and bonus pay, employees now have an overview of their entire compensation package.

Prior to launch, Credit Suisse used posters to get employees interested before the new program launched. One poster stated:

“Your Total Rewards; It’s More Than You Think.”

On the day of launch, Credit Suisse placed fliers throughout the building to stir up interest for their new online total rewards statements program among their employees.

Did All of Their Efforts Pay Off?

The rollout of the new system was a success; senior management was happy and email responses indicated employee and executive satisfaction as well.

Praise for the program ranged from positive feedback for the availability of all the information in one place to the ease of navigating the website.

The End Result: The HR Total Reward Program provided Credit Suisse employees with complete information about the rewards garnered through their employment in a simple, informative manner – an important development for Credit Suisse.