Employee benefits vary widely by country, tax treatment, statutory requirements, healthcare systems, and employer contribution levels.
That naturally makes employee benefits benchmarking far more complex than salary benchmarking.
Add unreliable benefits data into the mix, and it’s easy to see why benefits are the biggest challenge in attracting talent for 32% of companies and the biggest retention challenge for 27%, according to Ravio’s 2025 Compensation Trends Report.
Essentially, the struggle boils down to understanding what “competitive” actually looks like for your company size, industry, and hiring locations – not simply offering more benefits.
That starts with reliable employee benefits benchmark data, and this guide shows you exactly how to evaluate it.
We’ll cover:
Employee benefits benchmarking is the process of comparing your organisation’s employee benefits package against market benchmarks from similar companies in your industry and hiring locations.
Teams use benefits benchmarks to evaluate how competitive their offerings are, identify opportunities for improvement, and make more informed decisions about total compensation and benefits.
Salary decisions are often backed by clear salary bands, market benchmarks, and compensation frameworks.
Benefits decisions rarely have the same level of structure.
Many companies know they need to offer competitive benefits, but deciding which benefits to offer, how generous they should be, and where to invest often becomes a judgement call rather than a data-informed decision.
Without a structured approach, you end up in one of these two traps:
Employee benefits benchmarking helps replace guesswork with reliable market data.
Rather than copying competitors or adding benefits based on assumptions or requests from individual employees, combine three things:
The result is a benefits package that’s competitive and cost-effective, and in line with the workforce you’re trying to attract and retain.
Employee benefits benchmarks aren’t limited to healthcare or pensions.
Comprehensive employee rewards benchmarking covers the full benefits package, helping employers compare both the breadth of benefits offered and the policies behind them.
Common areas to benchmark against your market standard include:
Health and wellbeing
Financial benefits
Time off
Learning and flexibility
Workplace benefits and perks
The exact benchmarks available depend on the employee benefits benchmarking tool or dataset you’re using.
For example, Ravio groups benefits benchmarks under health and wellbeing, paid time off, family, wealth, learning and development, flexible working, workplace benefits, and equity.
Ravio's employee benefits benchmarks
Ravio collects its benefits data from companies when onboarding them, aggregates it, and makes it available as location-specific benchmarks across Europe and the US.
This allows employers to compare their benefits package against others operating in the same market.
Employee benefits benchmarks do more than show what benefits employers offer.
They give you the context you need to make informed benefits decisions with confidence.
For instance, benefits benchmarks help you:
It also helps you answer more granular questions like:
Using employee benefits benchmarks in Ravio, the People team built a benefits package that intentionally invests above the market in two areas the company values most: wellness and flexibility.
In the UK tech market, for example, only 3% of employees have a 4-day work week, 14% offer wellness days, and 34% of employees have a fitness/gym allowance wellness.
Ravio employee benefits benchmarks: wellness days
Based on those benchmarks, Ravio offers:
Since employee benefits are a core part of your total rewards strategy, the quality of your benefits decisions depends on the quality of the market data behind them.
Whether you’re introducing a new benefit, reviewing your healthcare offering, or deciding how much to invest in employee wellbeing, reliable benchmark data helps you make decisions with confidence.
So when evaluating employee benefits benchmark data, look for the following:
Benchmark data is only useful if you’re comparing against similar employers.
Look for data that lets you compare your benefits package with organisations that are similar in terms of your:
Also consider where a provider’s data comes from.
For example, traditional benefits survey datasets historically collect data from large enterprises and multinational organisations.
On the other hand, many employee benefits benchmarking software providers build their datasets from companies operating in particular regions or industries. As a result, the benchmarks are often more representative of those markets.
You’ll see this difference more clearly when we compare employee benefits benchmarking providers below.
Benefits change over time as employers respond to new legislation, rising costs, and changing employee expectations.
But if the benchmark data you reference is 12–18 months old, it may no longer reflect what your market is offering today.
A reliable benefits benchmark should be based on a sufficient number of relevant organisations.
Benchmarks built from small or unrepresentative samples are less likely to reflect your hiring market accurately.
That’s why it’s important to consider both the sample size and who contributes to it.
A smaller dataset of companies similar to yours is often more valuable than a larger one that isn't representative of your market.
A reliable employee benefits benchmark data provider should clearly explain:
Without that transparency, it becomes difficult to judge how representative and reliable the benchmark really is.
Different employee benefits benchmarking tools vary in the breadth of benefits they cover.
Some providers – particularly traditional salary survey datasets – cover only a limited set of employee benefits, while others benchmark a much broader range of health, financial, family, workplace, and lifestyle benefits.
It’s also worth looking beyond the number of benefit categories.
Check whether the data actually includes the specific benefits you want to benchmark, whether that’s parental leave, pensions, wellness allowances, remote working policies, or equity.
Employee benefits benchmarking providers differ significantly in the benefits they benchmark, the countries they cover, how they collect the data, and how you access it.
Below, we compare seven of the best employee benefits benchmarking data sources, including their benefits coverage, strengths, limitations, and who they’re ideal for:
Employee benefits benchmarking provider | Best for | Geographical coverage | Data source | Benefits coverage |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Ravio | Tech and tech-enabled companies in Europe and the US. | Europe and the US. | 1,600+ participating companies. | Health, family, workplace, flexible work, wealth, PTO, L&D, equity. |
Radford Aon | US enterprises. | US. | 1,200+ survey participants. | Health, retirement, time-off, and welfare benefits. |
Mercer Marsh | Global corporations. | Global. | 1,200+ survey participants. | Health, retirement, parental, disability, and social benefits. |
Reed | Companies in the UK. | UK. | Annual survey of 5,000 UK employees. | Benefits and workplace trends. |
Benepass | Teams looking for high-level benefits trends. | Global. | 280+ organisations | Lifestyle spending, pre-tax benefits, commuter perks, and contribution benchmarks. |
WTW | Global multinationals | Global. | 19,000+ survey participants. | Health, retirement, wellbeing, risk, time off, travel, meals. |
Kota | Companies in the UK and Ireland. | UK and Ireland. | 1,800+ companies. | Health, pension, life, income protection, dental, and wellness. |
Ravio is a real-time total rewards benchmarking tool that also provides employee benefits benchmarks sourced across the UK, Belgium, France, Germany, Ireland, the Netherlands, Spain, Sweden, and the US.
Who is Ravio ideal for: Tech and tech-enabled companies in Europe and the US looking for comprehensive employee benefits benchmark data and salary benchmarking in one platform.
Available benefits benchmark categories:
Upon onboarding, Ravio’s team sources employee benefits data from customers – reducing manual work on your plate.
Data specialists then verify submissions, check for outliers, and standardise the data before it’s added to the benchmark dataset.
This gives you reliable employee benefits benchmarks you can compare alongside Ravio's salary, variable pay, and equity benchmarks, helping you make more informed total rewards decisions.
Pros:
Cons:
Radford Aon is a long-established HR consultancy offering employee benefits benchmarking from 1,200 participating organisations across 50 industries in the US.
Who is Radford Aon benefits benchmarking ideal for: Enterprises in the US with in-house teams to manage benefits data submissions.
Available benefits benchmarks categories:
Aon’s benefits benchmarking is available with a handful of options:
Pros:
Cons:
Like Aon, Mercer is an HR consultancy offering multiple survey-based employee benefits benchmark datasets across 76 markets.
Who is Mercer benefits benchmarking ideal for: Large, global corporations.
Available benefits benchmarks categories:
Mercer’s benefits benchmark data is delivered through PDF reports, with customised reports available for industry and custom peer groups.
The datasets draw on data from more than 1,200 participating organisations, collected through Mercer’s traditional give-to-get benchmarking model.
Mercer also offers additional benchmarking resources, including Transportation Policies & Costs, Worldwide Benefit & Employment Guidelines, and Social Security & Medicare guidance.
Pros:
Cons:
Reed is a UK recruitment agency that publishes free salary and employee benefits reports based on annual employee surveys.
Who is Reed ideal for: Organisations in the UK looking for high-level employee benefits and workforce trends rather than detailed employer benchmarking.
Available benchmark categories: Reed focuses on broader employee benefits, salary, and workplace trends rather than employer benefits benchmarks.
Reed’s free benefits reports combine survey findings with salary data to highlight the benefits employees receive, the benefits they value most, and broader recruitment and retention trends.
Rather than benchmarking employer benefits against peer organisations, the reports focus on employee preferences and broader salary trends in the UK.
Pros
Cons
Benepass is primarily a benefits administration platform that also publishes an annual employee benefits benchmarking report based on aggregated customer data.
Who is Benepass ideal for: Teams looking for high-level employee benefits benchmark data and total rewards trends.
Benepass’s annual benchmarking report combines employee benefits benchmark data and market insights from more than 280 organisations across 90+ countries.
It focuses primarily on lifestyle spending accounts, pre-tax benefits, employer contribution benchmarks, and broader employee benefits and total rewards trends.
Available benefits benchmarks categories:
Pros:
Cons:
Willis Towers Watson is another legacy provider that offers global benefits data from over 19,000 participants across 100+ countries.
Who is WTW benefits benchmarking ideal for: Global organisations building regional benefits packages with an in-house team to manage data submission and analysis.
Available benefits benchmark categories:
Organisations can contribute benchmark data either by completing WTW’s benefits questionnaires or by sharing plan documents, which WTW can enter on their behalf for an additional fee.
WTW offers two employee benefits benchmarking products:
Pros:
Cons:
Kota is an employee benefits administration platform that offers a free benefits benchmarking tool built on data from 1,800+ companies across the UK and Ireland.
Who is Kota ideal for: Growing organisations in the UK and Ireland looking for self-service employee benefits benchmarking.
Available benchmark categories:
Kota’s benchmarking tool lets you compare your benefits package against similar organisations by industry, company size, and region.
Additionally, you can compare both the benefits you offer and your employer contribution levels against similar organisations.
Pros:
Cons:
The quality of those benefits decisions depends on the quality of the data behind them.
Comparing against the right employers with reliable, up-to-date benefits benchmarks helps you invest in the right benefits, avoid unnecessary spend, and build a package that attracts and retains the right talent.
Want to see how your benefits package compares?
Book a demo with the team to explore Ravio's benefits benchmarking data, and to see how your benefits package compares against similar employers across Europe and the US.
Common employee benefits benchmarking mistakes include:
There’s no single employee benefits package that works across Europe. Benefits vary by country because of local employment laws, tax rules, healthcare systems, and employee expectations. For example, employers in France must provide complementary private health insurance and reimburse at least 50% of public transport costs. Whereas in Germany, employers must share statutory health insurance costs, while transit subsidies like the Deutschlandticket are voluntary, not required.
Traditional benefits survey datasets can provide useful market insights, but they’re often updated periodically rather than continuously. As employers respond to changing legislation, rising costs, and evolving employee expectations, survey data can become outdated before the next publication. Many employers therefore complement survey data with employee benefits benchmarking tools that provide more current market benchmarks.
Employee benefits benchmarks help employers understand whether their benefits package meets market expectations. If competitors offer stronger healthcare, pensions, parental leave, or flexible working arrangements, employees may be more likely to look elsewhere. Benchmarking helps identify those gaps before they become retention problems.
Employee benefits benchmarks help employers invest where it matters most. By showing how their benefits package compares with similar employers, benchmark data helps organisations identify where they’re overspending, underinvesting, or offering benefits that no longer align with market expectations or employee needs.
Compare your benefits package with employers competing for the same talent. That usually means organisations with a similar company size, industry, and hiring location. Comparing against the wrong peer group can lead to benefits decisions that are either unnecessarily expensive or uncompetitive.
Yes, but global benefits benchmarking should account for local market differences. Benefits vary significantly by country due to legislation, tax rules, healthcare systems, and employee expectations. Benchmarking against local employers generally provides more meaningful insights than relying on a single global benchmark.
Most organisations should benchmark employee benefits at least annually. However, employers hiring in competitive markets, expanding internationally, or reviewing their total rewards strategy benefit from benchmarking more frequently using regularly updated market data.
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