AON Study Reveals Progress on Global Benefits Governance

Aon and the American Benefits Institute's latest survey, Global Benefits Governance and Operations Study 2018/2019, found that companies worldwide are making progress with the global governance of employee benefits—although nearly all of them still believe that more can be done according to a statement from Aon.

The study encompassed over 200 multinational companies from around the world ranging in size from over 100,000 to fewer than 10,000 employees. The study explored key issues surrounding what companies can do to better align benefits with organizational strategy and how they can better manage the costs and risks associated with global benefits.

Key findings from the study include the following.

• The primary barriers to progress remain lack of time, resources, and budget.
• In many countries, there is a lack of suitable technology and expertise about norms and opportunities.
• Those who have made the most progress cite internal and external collaboration as key enablers.
• Those who have progressed have typically started by getting clarity surrounding strategy and structure.
• Organizations often hit a barrier of uncertainty around next steps after collecting data from around the world.
• The findings were remarkably common by size of company and headquarters location.
• Companies describing themselves as generally centralized have made the greatest progress with global governance.
• The expectation of further progress is backed by an expectation of further corporate centralization.

"In this latest study, we have explored whether multinational companies have made progress towards best practice governance—maintaining the optimum control across their worldwide benefits operations—and whether value is still being seen in achieving best practice. We dug deeper into the drivers and enablers for governance, as well as the barriers that many have experienced," said Jim Tindale, partner at Aon.

He continued, "What is clear from the latest study is that there is a strong desire to implement best practice global governance—with 90 percent of companies wanting to make further progress and 74 percent of them aiming to achieve best practice global governance by 2021. Encouragingly, companies achieving a better state of affairs are also signaling that they are increasingly able to demonstrate the value from having done so."

"Irrespective of their individual progress, nearly all the respondents to our study want to continue to broaden and deepen their involvement in the design, financing and operations of their benefits arrangements around the world. However, fewer have attained best practice levels than had hoped to do so—31 percent compared to 80 percent who aimed to do so by 2018 in our previous study," according to Mr. Tindale.