In the Spotlight: Offering Choice through Flexible Mobility Benefits

The demand for flexibility and personalization of the employee experience, as a way to increase satisfaction and address needs of a diverse workforce, is intensifying. BGRS’s John Gennaro, Vice President, Business Integration and the Product Owner of BGRSflex™, BGRS’s flexible benefits solution, is In the Spotlight to discuss how to incorporate flexibility into your organizations’ mobility programs.

Flexible benefits mobility programs were historically challenging to manage. How does BGRSflex enable organizations who want to offer these programs?

John Gennaro: What’s unique about BGRSflex is the breadth of the solution. BGRSflex is digitally-enabled and integrated into ReloAccess™ – our digital platform designed to support mobility managers and mobile employees – to optimize mobile employees’ user experience, and drive governance and transparency for the mobility managers’ organization. In addition, BGRS provides full support from guiding our clients through the initial decision-making around what type of flexible benefits approach fits their culture and mobility objectives, to program design, implementation and configuration, and ongoing program administration.

This support is critical, as transitioning to a flexible benefits delivery approach often requires clients to assess and redesign their program and policies, address compliance and equity considerations, and a fair amount of internal change management. That said, the benefits organizations can reap in terms of positive employee experience are significant. For example, BGRS’s 2021 Talent Mobility Trends Survey of more than 120 corporate mobility leaders found that a dramatic 82% of respondents believe flexibility will have a direct positive impact on the employee experience.

We actively accompany the clients and their employees through the whole mobility journey. To complement the digital tools, we provide expert resources who guide the mobile employees at the key points in their benefits selection. The consultant’s role is to reduce complexity for the employee where necessary and ensure duty of care and compliance needs are met. We also guide the clients’ mobility management team through ongoing program optimization, using comprehensive program analytics and offering actionable data-driven insight.

Could you highlight some of the specific elements of the solution?

John: BGRSflex offers all of the key functionality to effectively deliver flexible benefits programs. The core and flex benefits are fully configurable to program objectives and types of mobility, in currency or point-based benefits approaches, including an optional cash out. We offer dynamic personalization capabilities driven by the employee profile, budget spend management and reallocation based on personal needs throughout the move lifecycle and an end of assignment calculator. This is delivered through an easy-to-use interface to empower the employee as they adjust their benefits within a clear, guided, framework. The mobility managers benefit from full transparency into benefits selection and usage, meeting compliance and duty of care prerequisites, as well as an ability to manage overall cost while maximizing investment into each relocation.

BGRSflex is fully integrated into our mobility experience management and all clients benefit from seamless, access to a wide array of services through BGRS’s global supply chain, financial services, reporting and program analytics, strategic account management, and consultancy offering.

The adoption of a flexible benefits program often depends on an organizations’ culture and mobility objectives. Do you see any patterns in how clients are approaching the transition?

John: Each organization is definitely different when it comes to specifics. We have consciously built a tailored consulting approach into our solution. Our Mobility Experience Solutions practice works directly with the client to design a program aligned to their needs from program diagnostics, model design through to implementation and go-live support.

More generally, however, we see two types of approaches to how clients transition to flexible benefits programs. The first, and perhaps currently more common, is a gradual transition. The client focuses on a single or a handful of policies. These are typically the more complex mobility types, such as long or short-term international assignments. The opportunities to improve employee experience and optimize cost are typically greater with these complex programs, which then gives the client a stronger opportunity to assess the value of core/flex policies for their organization. We also have clients who successfully transitioned to flexible benefits across their entire policy suite immediately, without the gradual approach. These organizations typically have a strong internal business case for implementing flexibility.

Our Mobility Experience Solutions practice members have experience in guiding organizations through all of these scenarios and decisions. Given that BGRSflex is fully integrated into our broader experience management, we can support clients through a transition at their pace. Fundamentally, all of their employees benefit from BGRS’s relocation guidance and support regardless of their policy type, which leaves the client’s mobility team able to focus on tailoring the transition to flexible benefits in a way that truly meets their needs.