With tighter budgets, rising employee expectations, and greater scrutiny from leaders, instincts and good intentions no longer suffice.
Business leaders want hard evidence their employee benefits and wellbeing programmes deliver value; not just for employees, but for their business.
However, proving that value can be complicated. It requires integration of multiple data sources, including employee feedback, healthcare claims, absence trends, usage data and benchmarking.
Even then, the picture is not always clear. For example, does higher healthcare usage lead to better outcomes, or just more cost? Without a structured approach, incomplete data can create confusion rather than clarity.
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The Benefits Design Research Report 2025, by Howden Employee Benefits and the Reward and Employee Benefits Association (REBA), highlights this growing risk: over 30% of benefits proposals are being rejected due to a lack of evidence to support them, meaning a lack of stakeholder buy-in. It is also clear that without evidence, future investment will be even harder to secure.
So how can HR and reward professionals strengthen their position?
Here are six practical steps to use benefits data for greater strategic impact:
1. Define the outcomes you are trying to achieve
A good starting point is identifying key goals: what the benefits are meant to achieve. Is the aim to improve retention, reduce stress-related absence, or improve retirement outcomes? Once the outcomes are clear, what data is needed to measure progress? Setting SMART goals at this stage is essential, especially the 'S' for specific. If the objectives are vague, the reporting will be too.
2. Track costs and employee satisfaction
Cost and employee satisfaction are useful metrics to measure when starting out. Typically, most HR and reward professionals are reporting on this data today. It can also be useful to track costs each year, and any changes, together with employee feedback on the benefits, as this is the kind of information that needs to be reported regularly to stakeholders.
3. Don’t forget the detail linked to your biggest areas of spend
Aside from cost and employee satisfaction, organisations will have many other key data points to help understand the impact, challenges, and successes of a benefits programme. Take retirement outcomes, they are one of the least measured data points, and yet a good pension is one of the most valued benefits and a major investment for companies too. It makes business sense to track it. The same goes for health: what do claims tell you about the health of the employees? Do trends point to stress, musculoskeletal issues, or chronic illness?
Such insights can also provide a much fuller view of performance which can drive informed decision-making and target improvements.
4. Report regularly and support any investment decision with data
HR and reward professionals should not wait for an issue in the business or for budget time to discuss data. Benefits performance should be reported regularly – ideally quarterly – to build confidence with the leadership team.
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Crucially, if any investment is requested without data, it is likely to be futile. Leaders need to understand both the objective of the benefits and its potential return. Every recommendation should be accompanied by clear evidence of performance and how it aligns with the strategic business goals.
5. Address data skills gaps and find a partner to help
Many HR teams lack the tools, time, or analytical skills to manage benefits data internally. However, they do not have to go it alone. A good adviser can help interpret claims, benchmark performance, and build business cases, while also upskilling the team for the future.
6. Don’t rely solely on benchmarking
Benchmarking helps position benefits competitively, but it does not reflect the specific needs of a workforce. Best practice would be to combine external comparisons with internal data such as benefits usage, feedback, and claims, to create a business case that reflects a specific workforce.
Effective HR relies on strong, consistent data, data that is often available within organisations but needs to be unified and analysed.
HR's true value lies in being able to invest in people initiatives that support business outcomes, in terms of talent and performance.
Read more: How to get reward right without being reactive
As much as that is a very people focused role, more and more it requires the use of data to deliver evidence-based delivery and recommendations to budget holders.
If you’re a reward professional, now is the time to up your data game.
By Matthew Gregson, executive director at Howden Employee Benefits
