Total Rewards Strategy as a Workforce Investment Portfolio

Total Rewards Strategy as a Workforce Investment Portfolio
September 11, 2026 7 mins

Total Rewards Strategy as a Workforce Investment Portfolio

Rethinking Total Rewards Strategy as a Workforce Investment Portfolio

As workforce priorities, business needs and investment pressures evolve, organizations need to manage total rewards as an interconnected portfolio — balancing investment, impact and value for employees and the business.

Key Takeaways
  1. Workforce complexity and evolving employee needs are reshaping total rewards, requiring more dynamic total rewards portfolios that can be rebalanced as workforce and business priorities change.
  2. Total rewards are increasingly viewed as a business investment rather than a siloed decision, adding pressure for leaders to demonstrate how total rewards strategy spending may contribute to productivity, engagement and performance.
  3. Analytics can help organizations make smarter investment decisions, but human insight into employee needs, motivation and experience remains essential in an era of rapid workforce change.

Leading organizations are treating total rewards as an interconnected workforce investment portfolio — using data and employee insight to balance competing priorities and help ensure investments support both workforce needs and long-term business goals. That’s because employers are managing a workforce that is more complex, geographically dispersed and varied in its needs than ever before. Employees face different life, career and financial trade-offs, while employers contend with rising costs, evolving business priorities, retirement adequacy issues and pressure to demonstrate the value of their people investments. The question is no longer whether organizations should offer more programs to win talent, but how total rewards leaders can work across traditional silos to build a more effective total rewards strategy and invest more effectively.

However, workforce complexity makes decisions more difficult. Employees have different needs depending on their career stage, location and personal circumstances, and technology is reshaping skills requirements and career pathways. As a result, organizations need a clearer understanding of where investments create the greatest value and how different elements of the rewards portfolio work together to support both employee and business outcomes.

A Portfolio Approach to Total Rewards

To build total rewards strategies that can keep pace with workforce change, employers need to look beyond individual programs and examine where their current approach is falling short. This begins with revisiting foundational questions: Is our people strategy still fit for purpose? Do our compensation, benefits, wellbeing and career development philosophies reflect the skills, capabilities and workforce segments that matter most today? Organizations that proactively realign their pay philosophies with evolving talent priorities may be better positioned to invest their total rewards in areas that will have the greatest impact on engagement, retention and business performance.

Success in this new environment means taking a more deliberate approach to rewards portfolio management, and focusing on four key shifts:

1. From Cost Management to Workforce Investment

Portfolio management is not about offering more rewards. It is about continuously reallocating resources to areas that create the greatest value as workforce needs, business priorities and cost pressures change. This requires close coordination across the total rewards portfolio, so investment decisions are made with a view of the whole rather than individual programs.

Like an investment portfolio, total rewards programs require ongoing evaluation and prioritization. As workforce costs rise, organizations must make deliberate decisions about where to invest more to preserve overall affordability, while maximizing value delivered to employees. Many businesses are still building the foundations needed to make these decisions effectively. Only 19% of organizations report having an employee value proposition that is both clearly defined and well understood.1

In a cost pressure environment, organizations can't maximize every rewards program simultaneously. “The challenge is understanding which lever to pull, and at what point in time,” says Leo Williamson, Total Rewards Growth Leader, Talent. “Like any investment portfolio, total rewards require deliberate allocation across competing priorities, balancing short-term workforce needs with long-term business value. The most effective total rewards strategies are no longer defined by how much organizations invest, but by how intentionally they allocate limited resources.”

2. From Enrollment Metrics to Workforce Impact

As workforce spending comes under greater scrutiny, chief human resources officers (CHROs) and rewards leaders must provide proof points for their workforce investments, focusing on business outcomes.

Yet, many organizations still rely on traditional measures of success, such as participation rates, employee satisfaction scores and market benchmarking. According to Aon’s research, employee satisfaction scores (57%), turnover rates (50%) and external benchmarks (42%) remain the most common measures of total rewards effectiveness, with productivity measures being used the least.

While these remain important indicators, they often provide only a partial picture of how rewards influence workforce and business outcomes. Organizations need advanced analytics that delve deeper to understand whether rewards investments are associated with broader business outcomes, such as productivity, workforce resilience, skills readiness and performance.

12%

of chief people officers and board directors use comprehensive, interactive analytics tools.

Source: Aon’s 2026 Human Capital Trends Study

3. From Standardized Offerings to Workforce Relevance

As workforces become more diverse across generations, life stages, locations and career paths, many employers are still making investment decisions with a one-size-fits-all approach. More than a third of organizations (38%) do not currently tailor their total rewards strategy to different workforce segments. Only 13% use workforce analytics to segment employees and personalize offerings, despite growing pressure to balance workforce expectations with cost constraints. “The workforce is more diverse and not monolithic, making it more important to understand which reward components are meaningful to different workforce profiles,” says Shana Gotlieb, Global Commercial Solutions Leader, Total Rewards.

13%

Only 13% of organizations use workforce analytics to segment employees and personalize offerings.

Source: Aon’s 2026 Human Capital Trends Study

4. From Investment to Perceived Value

Communication plays a key role in total rewards strategy, offering employees insight and access to the investments organizations make in compensation, benefits, wellbeing and career programs. Even significant investments can fail to create meaningful value if employees are unaware of what’s available or unable to connect those offerings to their personal needs.

Information overload and competing priorities are cited as leading barriers to effective employee communication. In fact, only 21% of organizations say their total rewards communication approach fully meets their needs. As a result, perceived value is becoming an increasingly important measure of total rewards effectiveness. Clear, targeted communication and integrated technology platforms can help employees connect rewards to their individual circumstances, turning investments into a more visible and trusted part of the employee experience.

However, communication is not a substitute for strategy. Rather, it should help employees understand and make informed use of rewards that are already aligned with business and workforce priorities. Equipping managers to guide employees to relevant resources can further strengthen that connection between investment and perceived value.

Case Study: Employee-Driven Reward Decisions

Case Study: Employee-Driven Reward Decisions

A rapidly growing healthcare organization recognized that its total rewards programs had evolved over time, without a clear long-term strategy. Rather than relying on assumptions about what employees valued most, the organization partnered with Aon to gather workforce feedback and benchmark its offerings against relevant market peers. The findings revealed a disconnect between leadership priorities and employee preferences, helping identify where investment could have the greatest impact. The resulting roadmap included enhanced retirement benefits, additional paid time off, redesigned healthcare options and new support services, creating a more reward aligned with workforce needs, business goals and future growth.

Quote icon

The future of total rewards will be defined not by the number of programs employers offer, but by how effectively they align investments with workforce needs and business priorities. Success will require organizations to manage total rewards as a workforce investment portfolio, guided by data, insight and clear strategy.

Helen Payne
Total Rewards Leader, United Kingdom

If you are ready to evaluate your total rewards program to optimize your organization's people strategy, visit Aon's Total Rewards Solutions page or contact us to start a conversation.

Aon’s Thought Leaders:

Shana Gotlieb
Global Commercial Solutions Leader, Total Rewards

Leo Williamson
Total Rewards Growth Leader, Talent

With contributions from Lauren Borcherding, Ji Chuan Leong, Helen Payne, Michelle Pieschalski, and Maggie You.

1 * All data sourced from Aon's 2026 Human Capital Trends Study, unless otherwise stated.

General Disclaimer

This document is not intended to address any specific situation or to provide legal, regulatory, financial, or other advice. While care has been taken in the production of this document, Aon does not warrant, represent or guarantee the accuracy, adequacy, completeness or fitness for any purpose of the document or any part of it and can accept no liability for any loss incurred in any way by any person who may rely on it. Any recipient shall be responsible for the use to which it puts this document. This document has been compiled using information available to us up to its date of publication and is subject to any qualifications made in the document.

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