Pensions remain the biggest headache for employers when it comes to pay and benefits, according to research.
More than six in 10 organisations (63%) say their biggest concern is to ensure their pension fund investment arrangements are cost-effective and operationally efficient, the pay and benefits survey by Mercer Human Resource Consulting found.
The survey, which questioned more than 600 employers, asked respondents to rate the importance of a range of pension, benefit and pay issues to their organisation.
Across all respondents, the top four issues were pensions-related. Preparing for new pension tax limits next year; pension fund asset allocation strategy; pension risk and governance were all voted very important by more than half of respondents (56%, 54% and 52% respectively).
Peter Bowers, worldwide partner at Mercer, said pension scheme liabilities had come under intense scrutiny from finance directors over the past couple of years.
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“Pensions have moved from the HR agenda to become a finance issue, and this is reflected in the survey responses,” he said.
The need to develop efficient measures to link employee pay to performance was also identified as a crucial issue by 51% of organisations, while the desire to communicate the value of total rewards to employees was ranked very important by half of organisations (50%).
