Consulting firms organizing e-data to help HR make comparisons
Database technology allows consulting firms to provide clients with benchmarking tools for benefits comparisons.
Data from human resources consulting firm Towers Perrin’s 30-year-old database of corporate benefits is now available on the Internet to subscribers, delivering Web-based desktop access to detailed benefits data for comparative purposes.
Clients can go online quickly and efficiently to look at different scenarios by industry, says Montreal-based Towers Perrin consultant Christiane Bourassa. Clients can also get trend information and summaries of industry- or company-specific benefits programs for benchmarking. Watson Wyatt offers a similar service to Towers Perrin’s that allows employers to rate their benefits offerings against the competition.
“The objective is the ability to produce custom benchmarking studies, which measure and compare the relative value of benefit plans against other peer groups,” explains Nicholas Kovacs, a Montreal-based benefits consultant with Watson Wyatt Canada.
Benefits programs often represent 20 to 30 per cent of a company’s annual payroll, so managing those costs is a strategic necessity. Meanwhile, ensuring that benefits are competitive requires better information, particularly for recruitment and retention, says Bourassa.
The Towers Perrin database contains proprietary information, and is accessible only to subscribers. The benchmarking service allows clients to improve their access to data, frame queries and get answers using the Internet without contacting company staff.
“The way our product works is that you can ask several questions, and using Internet technology, drill down into benefits programs,” says Bourassa. Towers Perrin has 30 years worth of corporate benefits information in its database, and the unique nature of the data recently prompted a review of how the data is used and how it was offered.
Benefits “are very detailed,” and for every benefit there are numerous positions along a spectrum. Once it was decided to make the information directly available to clients, the hardest part was to develop a search engine that permits the manipulation of the data, says Bourassa.
The online service was launched in February, and more than 260 companies in Canada have signed up, says Bourassa. “It’s growing by the day.”
She says that subscribers tend to be larger companies in various fields including: chemical products, communication and publishing, electrical/electronic products, financial services, government, manufacturing/industrial, oil and gas, mining, paper and allied products, and services.
Benchmarking is a key step in helping organizations align their business objectives and establish their competitiveness in the marketplace, says Kovacs.
Watson Wyatt maintains a large, comprehensive database of Canadian companies, representing a broad cross-section of industry, geographic locations and company size. The firm offers benchmarking tools such as: prevalence tables, a spreadsheet of benefits plan provisions and customized benchmarking studies.
Prevalence tables examine individual benefit plan provisions as opposed to the entire benefits package. The purpose is to provide a cost-effective tool for organizations to gain a general understanding of the key characteristics of benefit plans offered by other employers. For more specific information, the prevalence tables can be obtained for various subsets of the database. The subsets can be based on industry, region or size.
A spreadsheet of benefits plan provisions provides qualitative information. This structured report summarizes key plan provisions of benefits program for specific employers selected from the database. The identity of companies selected is kept confidential.
A customized software program enables an employer to compare its benefit plans to other employer plans in the database. It provides an “at-a-glance” comparison of the individual benefit value and the total benefits package compared to the selected database.
Watson Wyatt’s valuation systems also have the capability of taking into account an employer’s workforce demographics in valuing each benefit plan to allow for a more relevant comparison.
Data from human resources consulting firm Towers Perrin’s 30-year-old database of corporate benefits is now available on the Internet to subscribers, delivering Web-based desktop access to detailed benefits data for comparative purposes.
Clients can go online quickly and efficiently to look at different scenarios by industry, says Montreal-based Towers Perrin consultant Christiane Bourassa. Clients can also get trend information and summaries of industry- or company-specific benefits programs for benchmarking. Watson Wyatt offers a similar service to Towers Perrin’s that allows employers to rate their benefits offerings against the competition.
“The objective is the ability to produce custom benchmarking studies, which measure and compare the relative value of benefit plans against other peer groups,” explains Nicholas Kovacs, a Montreal-based benefits consultant with Watson Wyatt Canada.
Benefits programs often represent 20 to 30 per cent of a company’s annual payroll, so managing those costs is a strategic necessity. Meanwhile, ensuring that benefits are competitive requires better information, particularly for recruitment and retention, says Bourassa.
The Towers Perrin database contains proprietary information, and is accessible only to subscribers. The benchmarking service allows clients to improve their access to data, frame queries and get answers using the Internet without contacting company staff.
“The way our product works is that you can ask several questions, and using Internet technology, drill down into benefits programs,” says Bourassa. Towers Perrin has 30 years worth of corporate benefits information in its database, and the unique nature of the data recently prompted a review of how the data is used and how it was offered.
Benefits “are very detailed,” and for every benefit there are numerous positions along a spectrum. Once it was decided to make the information directly available to clients, the hardest part was to develop a search engine that permits the manipulation of the data, says Bourassa.
The online service was launched in February, and more than 260 companies in Canada have signed up, says Bourassa. “It’s growing by the day.”
She says that subscribers tend to be larger companies in various fields including: chemical products, communication and publishing, electrical/electronic products, financial services, government, manufacturing/industrial, oil and gas, mining, paper and allied products, and services.
Benchmarking is a key step in helping organizations align their business objectives and establish their competitiveness in the marketplace, says Kovacs.
Watson Wyatt maintains a large, comprehensive database of Canadian companies, representing a broad cross-section of industry, geographic locations and company size. The firm offers benchmarking tools such as: prevalence tables, a spreadsheet of benefits plan provisions and customized benchmarking studies.
Prevalence tables examine individual benefit plan provisions as opposed to the entire benefits package. The purpose is to provide a cost-effective tool for organizations to gain a general understanding of the key characteristics of benefit plans offered by other employers. For more specific information, the prevalence tables can be obtained for various subsets of the database. The subsets can be based on industry, region or size.
A spreadsheet of benefits plan provisions provides qualitative information. This structured report summarizes key plan provisions of benefits program for specific employers selected from the database. The identity of companies selected is kept confidential.
A customized software program enables an employer to compare its benefit plans to other employer plans in the database. It provides an “at-a-glance” comparison of the individual benefit value and the total benefits package compared to the selected database.
Watson Wyatt’s valuation systems also have the capability of taking into account an employer’s workforce demographics in valuing each benefit plan to allow for a more relevant comparison.
