If you do not know what you have, you often do not appreciate it. This also applies to employees. If they have no insight into the conditions of employment they receive, they are also unaware of how you value them as an employer. Reward communication is therefore an important means of binding employees to you.

Aramco Overseas knows all about that. The Saudi oil company, a customer of Pointlogic HR, employs many technical specialists. Highly educated, scarce people on the labour market that employers can choose from: the company is fishing in the same pond as other multinationals in the oil and gas industry.

‘Extras are considered normal’

It is not without reason that Aramco Overseas invests heavily in the employment conditions of these employees. The scarce specialists are of great value to the company and difficult to replace. Moreover, the nature of the business is long-term: there is a considerable time lag between the design and construction of a refinery. Therefore, the organisation prefers to build long-term relationships with its employees.

But although these employees are entitled to above-average employment conditions, they often do not realise this, says Steven Kayser, employment conditions consultant at Aramco Overseas. Employees receive a competitive salary and we also offer many extras, such as a contribution to health insurance and a full reimbursement of travel expenses. But these things are often considered normal.’

So the strategic need for good reward communication is clear: provide insight into the total employment conditions package, to make employees aware of the total value of their remuneration. And thus to show how much Aramco Overseas values them.

The millennial need

The company had a clear idea of how to set up this reward communication. The organisation wanted to build an integrable, intuitive tool into its own intranet portal, in which employees could retrieve their total reward statement.

Aramco Overseas found the solution in the software solution inspire (formerly f3 : me) from PointlogicHR. With the system, employees can view the total value of their reward package anytime and anywhere. Moreover, with ‘what if’ scenarios, they can calculate the consequences for their salary when, for example, they work fewer hours or take leave.

Inspire not only fulfils a need of the organisation, but also that of the employees themselves. Their need for better information about employment conditions was growing rapidly. For new employees, the HR department had already provided total reward statements during the onboarding process, but existing employees could request these themselves. HR also organised information meetings where employees could ask questions. But that was not enough, says Kayser.

Our workforce is constantly changing and we employ more and more millennials. This also changes the demands on us as an employer. Employees who now enter our organisation want access to information anytime and anywhere. Not just in the work itself, but also in matters such as employment conditions. That was also shown by our employee satisfaction survey.

In the first month after going live, three quarters of the staff visited their personal overview.

Clear ROI

What does inspire give the organisation now? The system went into effect last autumn. Nevertheless, successes have already been achieved. In the first month after going live, three-quarters of the staff visited their personal remuneration overview. A convincing percentage, according to Kayser.

However, the biggest results of the personal overviews in inspire are indirect. When someone is thinking about moving to another employer because they are not happy with their pay, we can now clearly show how much we invest in them,’ says Kayser.

What’s more, the savings if we can retain this employee – the cost of replacing the employee and recruiting and training a new one – more than covers the investment in inspiration. So the ROI is very clear for us.’