The National Wages Council gave sound advice on managing non-wage costs (Tap govt support, trim other costs before pay cuts: NWC, March 31).

According to research, huge sums go wasted every year on human resource rewards and benefits - non-wage costs - which are either not utilised or underutilised by the workforce.

Examples would include health and wellness corporate programmes and staff discount programmes.

The Covid-19 circuit breaker could be an opportunity for HR practitioners to step up their game and recalibrate and optimise their rewards strategies, to extract greater value and cost savings for firms.

For instance, HR practitioners could benefit from gap analysis and data analytics to get a better feel of workforce needs and preferences, and identify an "efficient frontier" of rewards and benefits - holistic and effective rewards strategies that balance employer cost with employee needs.

This will help in the design of impactful HR rewards and benefits which are not only needs-driven, but are also fit to do what they were designed to do.

The outcome for firms from this exercise will be better alignment of rewards strategies with business goals and, consequently, the delivery of superior long-term value to both firms and employees.

During these unprecedented times, managing non-wage costs through innovative HR solutions will go far in extracting greater value and cost savings for firms.

Woon Wee Min