January 31, 2025

Creating a Globally Consistent Benefits Strategy

This guide’s goal is to inform employers on a variety of different elements to consider when creating their strategy. It also explores the business case and core tenets to focus on in establishing a thorough approach while providing guidance on how to produce a more equitable ecosystem.

Full Series

Implementing a global consistency strategy can feel daunting, but taking a structured, phased approach enables companies to make steady progress toward their goals. Here's how to get started and put your strategy into practice:

Prioritizing Areas of Focus

To operationalize a global consistency strategy, it's crucial to prioritize both the benefits you aim to standardize and the markets where you plan to begin. Breaking this process into manageable phases can make the task more achievable.

Once you have completed your gap analysis, narrow your focus by considering:

• 1 | Impact on employees: Prioritize benefits where there are significant gaps or limitations that affect a large number of employees.
• 2 | Alignment with other initiatives: For example, if you're rolling out a global well-being initiative, ensure that related benefits, like mental health services, are included in your strategy.
• 3 | Core benefit alignment: Focus on benefits that your company considers essential to its global strategy, such as life insurance or medical coverage.
• 4 | Organizational goals: Ensure that your chosen focus areas align with broader objectives, such as addressing inequities in health care access.

Prioritizing Markets of Focus

Once you've determined which benefits to prioritize, the next step is identifying the markets to focus on. Some considerations include:

• 1 | Countries with the highest need: Begin in markets where the gaps are greatest, and success can create a model for future rollouts.
• 2 | Growth markets: These markets offer opportunities to align benefit offerings with broader business objectives, such as talent acquisition and retention.
• 2 | Countries with the largest employee populations: Targeting larger employee populations can help influence insurers and create market leverage.
• 2 | Incubator country: Some companies choose one market as a test case for new benefits, allowing them to refine their approach before expanding globally.

Navigating Regulatory Considerations

Certain benefits, such as transgender care or fertility services, may encounter legal or regulatory hurdles in specific regions. To operationalize a global strategy, consider starting in regions where legal barriers are lower, gradually expanding to more complex markets.

Advancing and Progressing Your Vision

Once you've established your focus areas and selected countries, it's time to build a detailed roadmap. This roadmap should include:

• Eligibility criteria: Define who qualifies for the benefits, including employees and dependents.
• Coverage levels: Specify coverage limits, exclusions and waiting periods.
• Compliance checks: Ensure that benefits are in line with both local and global regulations.
• Tracking mechanisms: Use dashboards or other tools to monitor progress and ensure alignment with your global vision.

Engage local and regional teams for feedback, ensuring that benefits meet regional needs while staying consistent with the global framework.

Managing Costs and Risks

Justifying the potential increased costs of a global benefits strategy is key to gaining stakeholder buy-in. Therefore, it’s important to strike the right balance between affordable and sustainable benefits that align with your company’s short- and long-term goals. For example, well-being initiatives, a sustainable benefit, may require higher investment upfront, but they can yield cost efficiencies over time, making them a worthwhile investment.

Assess risks carefully by asking:

• Is the cost too low because the market is unfamiliar with the risk or is it too high to be sustainable?
• How will costs change at renewal time? Can you negotiate terms during future renewal cycles?

Best Practices and Continuous Improvement

As you roll out your global consistency strategy, document lessons learned after each renewal cycle. What worked? What didn’t? If gaps remain, continue to negotiate with vendors or explore alternative approaches.

Ensure that the strategy is flexible enough to accommodate the evolving needs of the business. As your company grows or enters new markets, reevaluate benefits that may have been unviable before but are now feasible.

Ensure that the strategy is flexible enough to accommodate the evolving needs of the business. As your company grows or enters new markets, reevaluate benefits that may have been unviable before but are now feasible.

More Topics

Resource Global Consistency & Governance Governance