In this article, we will explore how multinational organisations view and approach employee resilience, and the measures they are putting in place to mitigate related business risks. In addition, we will consider whether there are any regional differences in an employer’s treatment of people risk and what we can learn from this – the regions being defined by the physical location of an organisation’s global headquarters as either in North America, Europe, or the Asia Pacific region.

65% of the organisations we polled said that they are currently challenged by a shortage in the labour market. It is therefore as important as ever to not only attract the right talent, but to hold on to them too.

How do employers currently attract talent, and how do they keep their people happy and engaged? One of the ways might be to offer a competitive and suitable benefits package. Indeed, attraction/retention was stated globally as the second most important aspect employers consider when they design or review the benefits they offer – selected by 59% of respondents, only behind costs (70%). However, when we consider the most prevalent reasons employees gave for resigning from their jobs over the last year, inadequate benefits scarcely featured as a reason (less than 1 out of 10 respondents, and not listed at all by any with its global headquarters based in the Asia Pacific region).

This result either implies that employers tend to get their benefits offering right or simply, and probably more likely, that inadequate benefits might not be such a big driver of resignations when considered relative to other reasons.

The top four reasons employees gave for resigning are:

*Inadequate benefits – 6% (12^th most popular out of 14 stated reasons)

From this we note the importance of employers showing an interest and willingness to invest in their people, as expressed through career progression. Here, this reason even outscores inadequate pay – and to do so in the current economic climate, is telling.

There is an interesting regional observation to be made, since organisations with global headquarters based in either North America or Europe experience these same top four reasons, but those in the Asia Pacific region include poor line management (36%) but exclude being overworked from the top four.

These insights into why people might leave one employer for another, hint at something a little more ethereal for organisations to focus on to retain their staff. It has to do with the culture of an organisation, the physical environment, and how people “feel” at work. It has to do with an employee’s sense of belonging in the workplace.

In his popular book on human history, Sapiens, Yuval Noah Harari writes about what it is that sets Homo sapiens apart from other species. And when it comes to language it is not just our ability to communicate, which is not unique, but our ability to imagine and tell stories and to rally in large numbers behind a common story, a belief, or mythical entity, that binds large groups of people (often strangers) together in pursuit of a common goal and belonging to the same cause.

Relating this concept to the corporate world, the employer that can bind its people to a common cause is more likely to sustain long-term success. This would be especially true for large multinational organisations.

In our survey, we asked what organisations currently do to improve or maintain their employees’ sense of belonging. And it was interesting to find that employers listed showing an interest in employees’ career development right at the top (selected by 57% of respondents). Interesting, because a lack of such interest shown was stated as the main reason employees resigned over the last year. This suggests that employers tend to accurately recognise the concern when it comes to retaining staff and are keen to address the issue.

Overall, the top four ways to improve a sense of belonging are:

In North America, open recognition from peers was higher up, in second place, and this region is also the only one where the hosting of regular social events made the top four (selected by 55%). Europe saw working in an inclusive way (selected by 62%) leapfrog career development (57%) into first place, and the provision of benefits in addition to salary (47%) rounding out the top four. The Asia Pacific region had engaging communications in first place at 64%.

It is interesting that the provision of benefit programs is not a popular way of increasing a sense of belonging, listing only fourth in Europe and not at all in the North American and Asia Pacific regions. Again, this finding appears to be in line with inadequate benefits being low down on the list of reasons why employees resign, further suggesting that organisations appear to have their fingers on the pulse of what is meaningful to employees.

To what extent though, does NOT getting this right (improving employees’ sense of belonging) pose a threat to global businesses?

We asked organisations whether people risk features on their business risk registers and overall, 45% say that it features as a priority risk and a further 26% admit that it features but not as a priority. All three regions show similar findings.

In response, what actions do organisations take to mitigate this risk? Across the board, the top two actions are attracting the right talent and creating an agile and adaptable organisation. In the context of benefits, it is commendable that the design of benefit offerings appears to be aligned with people risk mitigation, whilst recognising the importance of being able to adapt to changing circumstances.

However, something interesting emerges when we look a little further; Organisations in both North America and Europe list embedding a diverse and inclusive workforce as its third most popular risk mitigation tool. Again, those in the Asia Pacific region have a different point of view and prefer to leverage organisational culture to drive desired conduct and behaviours. In this region, a diverse and inclusive workforce as a risk mitigation tool was selected by only 9% of respondents. And yet, working in an inclusive way was a popular choice for the question relating to improving employees’ sense of belonging. Conversely, working in an inclusive way did not feature in the belonging question answered by North American employers although it features as a risk mitigation tool. These discrepancies seem to suggest a misalignment between risk mitigation and the importance given to employee belonging.

Such a misalignment does not appear to be present in multinationals with headquarters based in Europe.

Having a sense of belonging also happens to be a key driver of higher levels of individual resilience. In our survey, we asked what some of the most effective indicators of resilience might be, which would ultimately prove whether an organisation’s attempts at improving their employees’ sense of belonging are working or not. The most common indicators overall are engagement surveys and how accepting employees are of change in the workplace. The rate of employee turnover was also high on the list and employers in North America singled out promotions and progression as an indicator, whilst the Asia Pacific region added employee competence.

What about the final piece in the solutions puzzle – employee benefits?

With talent attraction and retention foremost in employers’ minds when they design their employee benefit offerings, the top benefit programs specifically selected to strengthen employee resilience are as follows:

We see that the different regions all have a mix of the same preferred benefits making up the top four (out of a possible nine types of benefit programs).

Healthcare stands out as it broadly has the same level of interest across the board but only occupies the third spot in North America, as compared to being number one elsewhere. What makes this interesting is that unlike many countries in Europe, the United States does not have universal healthcare. We would therefore expect supplementary healthcare programs to be more popular in North America. Our findings, however, might either be because of Canadian data skewing the position in North America or an elevated global presence by multinational companies based in the United States resulting in more local (non-US) provision of healthcare. The latter is more likely since, if we isolate only those companies with headquarters in the United States, healthcare is even less popular (selected by only 58%):

In summary

Multinational employers, whilst having to negotiate the challenges presented by a shortage in the labour market, seem to realise that attracting the right talent and investing in their employees’ careers serve as major risk mitigation tools and embed a sense of belonging amongst their workforce that stimulates longer-term loyalties.

In practice, one of the best ways to improve this sense of belonging is to help strengthen employee resilience by offering targeted benefit programs such as flexible working, wellbeing, and healthcare and medical benefits.

There is always more for organisations to do, but what we can say without doubt is that benefit strategy continues to play a critical role and one which global HR practitioners should continue to take seriously.