PUTTING THE LENS ON EMPLOYEES
You are an individual with desires, interests and values that every product manufacturer, service provider and employer is trying to understand and anticipate to provide, and sometimes sell, something of value – or at least what they perceive to be of value – to you.
Given that South Africa has a working population of 9 644 000 in the formal nonagricultural sector as at the first quarter of 20171, can we expect employers to get this right for each one of us? And if so, how? How should they know what we want when we ourselves don’t always know, and when what we want changes from day to month to year?
The individual employee at the heart of the benefits framework
For employers, policymakers and service providers to engage effectively in co-creating a comprehensive social security package of meaningful benefits, they need to apply everything they know to the needs of the individual on the receiving end of these benefits – and this includes everything they know about the individuals themselves.
We’ve said before that employees still have a basic need for savings, income and medical protection regardless of how the world of work changes. A comprehensive benefits framework will take into account lifestyle needs such as housing and transport (which we discuss in more detail further on), financial protection against those ‘what-if’ scenarios, and savings that enable the accumulation of assets over time.
Because we all have obligations beyond our individual aspirations, employers can also consider providing personal improvement and protection benefits for both the individual employee and their family. This includes implementing policies which allow for the fact that ‘life happens’, acknowledging there will be times when people need more than just the legislated time off to attend to personal matters.
So, what should we be thinking about when developing this individualised, customised ‘package’ of benefits? In this chapter, we provide some direction by exploring employees in the context of their extended responsibilities. We then address the importance of considering different ‘money mindsets’ – attitudes and behaviours towards money that may influence the way individuals engage with these benefits.
By taking both these perspectives into account, we believe employers will be in a stronger position to offer the right benefits, at the right time, to employees who need them.
Individuals in the context of their responsibilities
Indeed no one is an island, especially in South Africa where the average household is made up of four people. This figure does not include grandparents or in-laws who live on the same property, extended family members whose numbers climb well into the fifties, and other individuals or groups who may not be related to but are dependent on you, either financially or for some other reason.
Adding to our ‘piece of the continent’ is a network of friends, colleagues, community circles and social organisations to whom we believe we owe some duty of care – whether formally or informally.
The responsibility lens
We see this network of significant others through our ‘responsibility lens’. The responsibility lens framework is a visual representation of an individual’s ecosystem of relationships and interdependencies between role players (industry, employer), partners (family, friends) and influences (social, community structures), as shown in Figure 4.
Naturally, we do not expect any two individuals to have the same responsibility lens. While the magnitude and focus of each lens will vary from person to person, no decision or activity – moving home, for example – by the individual at the centre is made or performed in isolation.
There are various forces at play that affect our individual interactions, decisions and outlooks within this lens. Personal circumstances (financial or otherwise), changing lifestage needs, cultural nuances, and upbringing, for example, play a role in determining how we connect the dots and allow the different lenses to co-exist in a balanced way.