Countrywide HR chief to explain staff feedback and benefits policies

A senior figure in Countrywide’s management team is to explain the troubled group’s benefits policy to a conference of other employers.

Neil Goodwin whose title is Head of Reward HR at Countrywide, will make the contribution at an event called Employee Benefits Live in London this week. 

His session is entitled ‘Structuring a cost effective and fluid benefits strategy’ and during the event Goodwin will reveal Countrywide’s reform of its staff benefit strategy. 

Publicity material for the event says Goodwin will highlight how employers can align their benefits to staff with ‘organisation vision’. 

It says “he will discuss how Countrywide has promoted its internal products and services to employees under its scheme Under One Roof, how existing supplier partnerships have been leveraged to create preferential employee deals, and how the organisation uses communications to gather staff feedback.”

He will also speak about how the group has used technology to communicate with staff. 

“My talk is focusing on cost efficiency, and [reward professionals will] always have to make the business case for benefits. Even if [an organisation] is doing well performance wise, it’s about showing the return on investment” he is quoted as saying in promotional material for the event.

“It’s about being commercial, which is key for us as reward professionals, and on the flexibility side, we need to be aligned with general society behaviours. People want more flexibility; they want more choice. They’re used to buying things online, having a lot more enablement from a [technology] perspective in terms of getting the deals they want and being able to flex things, so [employers] can’t just have a benefits offering these days that’s very static and people can only change their benefits once a year. That’s just not aligned with the different needs of [a] workforce, particularly younger [employees].”