Auditing Your Workplace Benefits Once a Year

Once a year, list sick pay, death-in-service, pensions nominations, and any employer CI. The audit takes an hour and prevents duplicate buying.

Pull the documents

Scheme booklets, HR portals, and last year’s total reward statement. Screenshot pages that vanish when you leave.

Score the gaps

Where employer cover ends, personal cover begins. Write the residual need in sterling.

Share with your partner

Both adults should know what exists. Mystery benefits help no one in a crisis.

• Death-in-service multiple and nomination.
• Sick pay schedule.
• Pension expression of wish.
• Personal policies list with premiums.

Share the map at home

Both adults in a household should know death-in-service multiples, sick-pay schedules, and where nomination forms live. A private spreadsheet neither partner can find helps nobody in a crisis.

Repeat the audit after every job change — benefits packages are not portable folklore.

Practical next steps

Treat this topic as a decision with paperwork attached. Write down the household facts that matter — who depends on income, which debts must clear, and which workplace benefits already exist — before you compare products. A clear brief stops glossy quotes from steering the plan.

When you speak to an insurer or adviser, ask for definitions and exclusions in writing, and keep PDFs of every illustration you rely on. Markets and underwriting change; your notes are the audit trail.

• Confirm what cover you already hold (personal and workplace).
• Size need against obligations, not round marketing numbers.
• Align wills, trusts, and nominations with the policy.
• Never cancel old cover until replacement is on risk.

Mistakes families make here

The common failure mode is optimising for the cheapest monthly figure while ignoring structure: joint versus single policies, accelerated versus additional benefits, and whether a trust exists at all. Another is letting group benefits create false confidence until a resignation removes them overnight.

Build a short annual review habit. An hour with schedules and nomination forms prevents most emergency weekends after a diagnosis or redundancy.