Explore every episode of the podcast Friends with Benefits

In this episode of Friends with Benefits, Deirdre O'Neil, co-founder and Chief Commercial and Legal Officer at Hertility, argues that most companies have the fertility benefit backwards.

They'll pay for the expensive, difficult treatment, but not the cheap screening that could have prevented someone needing it in the first place.

Deirdre joins Carl and David to unpack why women's health still gets treated as a niche benefit category, despite covering half the workforce and, by extension, most of their families too.

Private medical insurance was built around a male physiology and a model of treating acute injury, which means most of women's health gets excluded as "chronic" or "pre-existing" before it's even considered.

They also get into:

• Why funding IVF without funding fertility screening is like paying for chemotherapy but refusing to pay for a cancer screen
• The reproductive impact calculator Hertility built to turn empathy into a cost-of-inaction business case
• Why absenteeism and turnover numbers are too soft for some CFOs, and what metric actually lands instead
• The real story behind a routine fertility test that caught a 13cm ovarian cyst in an asymptomatic 28-year-old
• Why the men in the room often say they learned the most from a women's health education session
• Deirdre's hot take: prevention is cheaper than treatment, and most benefits strategy is still built the other way round

Friends with Benefits is the podcast for senior Reward and Benefits leaders. Hosted by Carl, VP of Benefit Strategy and Partnerships at Ben, and David, Co-Founder and COO at Ben.

In this episode of Friends with Benefits, Tarciso Nogueira, responsible for global benefits at Henkel, makes the case that most companies don't actually know what they're spending on benefits, or why.

Tarciso joins Carl and David to unpack the split between what should be decided locally and what should be set globally. Coverage, providers and plan design stay local, driven by social security gaps and market norms. But strategy, direction and data need a global view, and that's exactly where most companies fall short.

They also get into:

• Why most companies still can't say what percentage of personnel cost goes to benefits
• The M&A scenario that exposes just how little global visibility most companies have
• How to compare something like a company car against a mobility allowance on a like-for-like basis
• The explained vs unexplained pay gap, and the 5% threshold that triggers action under EU PTD
• Why total rewards statements are useful but rarely an apples-to-apples comparison between employers
• Tarciso's hot take: treat EU pay transparency as a total rewards opportunity, not just a compliance topic

Friends with Benefits is the podcast for senior Reward and Benefits leaders. Hosted by Carl, VP of Benefit Strategy and Partnerships at Ben, and David, Co-Founder and COO at Ben.

In this episode of Friends with Benefits, Dino Bertolis, founder of CycleSaver, argues that the biggest problem with most benefits programmes isn't a lack of generosity. It's a lack of friction.

Dino joins Carl and David to make the case that removing every barrier to a benefit doesn't always drive take-up. Benefits that ask employees for a small amount of effort often get used more than the ones handed over completely free. People need to feel they've earned something before they'll actually use it.

They also get into:

• The counterintuitive stat behind London's 57% rise in cycling
• Why time-bound campaigns beat always-on benefits
• The carrot vs stick debate
• What worked (and didn't) in Dino's years designing behaviour change programmes at Discovery Vitality
• How CycleSaver's model complements traditional Cycle to Work schemes
• The sustainability case employers are increasingly making for bike-share
• Dino's hot take on why reward and benefits leaders are some of the broadest generalists in any function

Friends with Benefits is the podcast for senior Reward and Benefits leaders. Hosted by Carl, VP of Benefit Strategy and Partnerships at Ben, and David, Co-Founder and COO at Ben.

In this episode of Friends with Benefits, Gregg Hall, Senior Compensation and Benefits Manager at Santander, argues that most financial wellbeing programmes are built on the wrong assumptions — and miss the people who need help most.Gregg joins Carl and David to push back on how the industry talks about financial wellbeing. Most programmes are designed for people who are already doing fine — guidance on retirement planning, optimising pension contributions, making the most of salary sacrifice.That misses two groups at once. People in financial trouble don't need a manual on how to avoid getting into a hole — they need a ladder out of one. And high earners, often assumed to be financially resilient, often aren't. A career of fast pay rises, a big mortgage, a sales role with bonus dependency, and no rainy-day fund creates the same problem at a different scale — and redundancy exposes it.They also get into salary advance and the senior pushback Gregg had to overcome, why take-up is the wrong metric to measure benefits by, the pension engagement signals that actually mean something, "do it and ask for forgiveness" as a buy-in strategy, and the pet benefits trend coming over from the US.

Chapters0:00 Intro2:00 The inflation and benefits adequacy debate7:35 What financial wellbeing actually means11:10 Why programmes are aimed at the wrong people12:08 Salary advance and the senior pushback15:30 Designing a programme with no budget17:34 The pension metrics nobody tracks19:44 Do it, then ask for forgiveness22:00 Industry vs. company — what actually shapes a strategy29:15 Talking to people, not demographics35:03 Pet benefits and what comes next37:42 Hot take: stop measuring benefits by take-up38:25 The high-earner assumption is wrongAbout Friends with Benefits

Friends with Benefits is the podcast for senior Reward and Benefits leaders. Hosted by Carl, VP of Benefit Strategy and Partnerships at Ben, and David, Co-Founder and COO at Ben.

Most global benefits transformations are planned in quarters. They're lived in years.In this episode of Friends With Benefits, Carl and David sit down with Adam Newton — Head of Reward at Fastmarkets — for an honest account of what a 15-month global benefits implementation actually involved. The ambition, the friction, the Finland moment, and what he'd do differently.Adam has spent his entire career in reward, with senior roles at G-Research, Associated British Foods, Misys, and Catlin before joining Fastmarkets, where he inherited a fragmented global benefits landscape and set about centralising it onto a single platform with a global flex allowance.In this conversation:

→ What he walked into: country managers calling their broker and asking for "the same again, not so expensive"→ Why 60–75% benefits engagement is considered good — and what that number doesn't tell you→ The Finland moment: ClassPass, a tax-free gym provision nobody had checked, and a launch that landed flat→ Why payroll errors during implementation are the ones you cannot afford→ The case for guardrails: why letting employees flex medical away is a decision you'll regret→ Medical inflation, compound cost projections, and the difficult conversations ahead→ Why 30 benefits at annual enrolment can become a catalogue nobody reads→ The hot take: your platform is only as good as your supplier's systems — and a lot of those systems haven't been updated in 30 yearsFriends With Benefits is the essential podcast for Reward and Benefits leaders. New episodes every fortnight.🎧 Subscribe on Spotify, Apple Podcasts and YouTube so you never miss an episode.Timestamps:00:00 What makes benefits different from the rest of reward01:28 In the news: only 53% of employees use their workplace benefits04:00 What good engagement actually looks like: 60–75% is the benchmark05:02 What Adam walked into at Fastmarkets06:28 The process: global broking, minimum standards, one platform09:10 The Finland moment — ClassPass, tax rules, and a launch that landed flat10:40 What he'd do differently: the timeline was too ambitious11:40 Test payroll before you go live13:14 The equity and equality problem with global minimum standards15:26 Phase two: total reward statements and the feedback loop17:00 When too many benefits becomes a catalogue19:00 Onboarding and making sure people know what they have21:00 Medical inflation and the compound cost problem23:25 Why people click now and read the small print never27:35 Why Fastmarkets doesn't let employees take cash out of the allowance29:18 The paternalism debate: guardrails vs choice30:27 Hot take: you're only as good as your supplier's systems

Companies spend 10–30% of payroll on benefits. Most of them manage it in Excel.In this episode of Friends With Benefits, Carl and David sit down with Peter Varga — EMEA Total Rewards Delivery Associate Director at Kyndryl — to talk about why global benefits administration is still structurally underfunded, and what it actually takes to change that.Peter has 20 years in HR Shared Services.

He built one of the first international benefits admin teams, catalogued 1,600 benefit plans across EMEA, APAC and LATAM at Citi, and developed a system-agnostic methodology for benefits transformation at Strada. He knows this space in a way most people don't.

In this conversation:

→ Why benefits technology always loses the budget fight against payroll

→ The maturity gap: benefits tech is ~15 years old. Payroll is 30+

→ Why implementing only for large headcount countries defeats the purpose

→ The phased approach that gets you data without the bells and whistles

→ What "benefits administration" actually contains — and why it's harder than it looks

→ Why 90% of benefits globally share the same underlying processes

→ How falling implementation costs could change the ROI calculation for smaller markets

→ The cataloguing work you cannot skip before any technology goes live

Friends With Benefits is the essential podcast for Reward and Benefits leaders. New episodes every fortnight.

🎧 Subscribe on Spotify, Apple Podcasts and YouTube so you never miss an episode.

Timestamps:

00:00 Benefits is where payroll fails

00:10 Why implementations take three months when they shouldn't

01:18 Peter's background and 20 years in the space

03:00 CIPD research: why companies don't measure benefits against their own objectives

07:00 Why benefits is always the smaller fish in the systems ecosystem

09:22 Companies spend 10–30% of payroll on benefits and manage it in spreadsheets

13:15 Why global rollouts fail when they only cover the big countries

16:55 The phased approach: data in the system without the bells and whistles

20:04 What benefits administration actually contains

20:48 The 90% rule: most benefits share the same underlying processes

23:18 Terminology vs process — why "group life" and "death in service" are the same thing

25:47 How AI could push implementation costs down significantly

30:52 Practical steps for a global benefits transformation

34:28 Peter's hot take

Fertility benefits aren’t “nice to have” anymore — they’re becoming a retention strategy.Aatish Pattani, Senior Director and Global Head of Rewards at Ferring Pharmaceuticals, joins Carl and David to unpack the rising cost of healthcare, why two in five employees would switch jobs for fertility support, and how global reward teams should be preparing for pay transparency.From medical inflation to recognition programmes to the AI hype cycle, this is a masterclass in pragmatic, data-driven reward leadership.About the GuestAatish Pattani, Senior Director and Global Head of Rewards at Ferring PharmaceuticalsAatish Pattani is a global reward leader with 17+ years’ experience across finance, media, technology, telecommunications and professional services. Now leading the Reward Centre of Excellence at Ferring Pharmaceuticals, he is responsible for shaping global reward strategy, challenging the status quo, and aligning benefits with business priorities.---SummaryAatish joins Carl and David for a wide-ranging conversation on what modern reward leadership really looks like inside a global pharmaceutical company.They explore the harsh reality of post-COVID medical inflation, why preventative healthcare still struggles to gain traction, and how employers are quietly reducing cover levels to manage rising costs .The conversation then turns to fertility — a workplace issue impacting one in six people, yet still under-supported by many employers. At Ferring, fertility support isn’t a tick-box exercise. It includes inclusive coverage, financial support, and up to 26 weeks’ leave — backed by leadership commitment and long-term thinking.They also dig into:- Why two out of five employees would leave their employer for fertility benefits- The coming wave of EU pay transparency and why “understanding your data” is non-negotiable- The risk of launching benefits you can’t sustain- Why recognition programmes matter more than ever- And Aatish’s hot take: AI isn’t the solution to everything.

Benefits teams are under pressure — rising medical costs, mental health claims, disengaged employees, and finance teams demanding proof. Claire Reading from WPP joins Carl and David to talk candidly about what’s really broken in benefits, why prevention is such a hard sell, and why nailing the basics still matters more than launching the next shiny thing.

Claire Reading is a global benefits professional with 12+ years’ experience delivering strategic change across EMEA, APAC, and the US. She has led benefits harmonisation, policy design, and global programme rollouts, partnering closely with HR, business, and communications teams to enhance employee experience and deliver cost-effective, inclusive solutions.

Along the way, Claire shares a clear perspective: while the industry chases “jazzy” benefits, many employees still don’t properly understand the fundamentals — and that gap comes with real risk.

00:00 — The Basics Are Being Left Behind

00:47 — Falling Into Benefits

02:29 — The Reality of In-House Benefits Roles

03:00 — Mental Health and Long-Term Sick Leave

04:28 — Why the Numbers Are Rising

05:18 — When Work and Life Blur

06:20 — NHS Pressure Drives Private Claims

08:14 — Benefits Don’t Land When People Are in Crisis

10:05 — Why Prevention Is So Hard to Sell

12:12 — How to Win Finance Over

16:48 — Intervention Is Easier Than Prevention

29:15 — Why Innovation Often Stalls

31:35 — The Benefit People Forget About

40:00 — A Hot Take on Private Medical

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Our festive episode reflecting on the first year of the Friends with Benefits podcast — plus Santa drops by with the world’s biggest benefit wishes.

In this Christmas Special, Carl and David look back on a standout first year for the Friends with Benefits podcast — from launching the format to hosting guests who challenged conventional thinking in reward and benefits.

The conversation covers reflections on standout episodes, why passion-led discussions matter more than scripted topics, and what themes are likely to dominate 2026. A surprise appearance from Santa (Seb) introduces a series of benefit “wishes” submitted by consultants, reward leaders, and managers — sparking honest discussion around AI, inclusion, pay transparency, engagement, and global complexity.

The episode closes with a look ahead to what’s shaping up to be a big year for benefits.

00:00 — Intro

00:39 — Reflecting on a Big First Year

01:00 — Why the Podcast Matters

01:41 — Letting Guests Talk About What They Care About

02:00 — A Standout Moment: Josephina from British Airways

02:34 — Purposeful Communication Over Noise

03:00 — Why Passion Creates Better Conversations

06:00 — Inclusion and Choice in Benefits

07:00 — Pay Transparency Is Coming (Whether You Like It or Not)

08:17 — Rethinking ‘Engagement’ in Benefits

09:19 — Global Complexity Isn’t Going Away

11:05 — Looking Ahead to 2026

Josephina Smith, Reward and Recognition Director at British Airways, joins Carl and David to explore the shift from financial wellbeing to financial empowerment — and why employers must think differently if they want people to make better financial decisions.

She breaks down the global design of BA’s award-winning financial empowerment program, the real drivers behind the pension gender gap, why reward must be seen as a value-creation function (not an admin one), and the mindset needed to successfully drive change inside a large organisation.

00:00 — Intro

00:45 — A Career Built on Change and Making a Difference

02:00 — Why Reward? Exposure, Emotion, and Influence

05:30 — Salary Sacrifice Reform: Cost, Uncertainty, Planning

08:45 — Why BA Chose Financial Empowerment Over Wellbeing

12:30 — Making It Global: No Copy-Paste Policies

15:30 — The Pension Gender Gap: A Systemic Problem

19:00 — Reward as a Strategic Function, Not Admin

23:00 — Risk, Reputation, and Legislative Awareness

28:00 — Change-Making: Courage and Intentionality

33:00 — Final Advice for Change Makers

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What happens when one of the earliest flexible-benefits pioneers looks at the industry today — and realises many of the same issues still haven’t been fixed?

Tony Nevin has spent over four decades in reward and benefits, working as an advisor, consultant, practitioner, entrepreneur, and one of the earliest team members at Thomsons (later Darwin, now Mercer).

Tony joins Carl and David to reflect on four decades in benefits — from the birth of flex, to the pitfalls of tech, to the ongoing struggles with admin, comms, and engagement.

They cover salary sacrifice reform, focus groups on factory floors, carers’ benefits, medical inflation, neurodiversity, and the hard truth that HR and finance often underestimate the strategic impact of benefits.

Episode Highlights:

00:00 — Intro

00:45 — 43 Years, a Green Suit, and an Accidental Career

02:00 — The Moment Flexible Benefits Were Born

03:30 — “The Problem Hasn’t Been Solved Yet”

05:30 — Salary Sacrifice: Easy for Government, Hard on Employees

08:45 — Engagement as the Real Bottom Line

12:30 — Benefits Aren’t Important… Unless You Make Them Important

16:00 — The Whiteboard Reality Check

19:00 — Carers Are the New Frontier of Workforce Support

23:30 — ADHD, Self-Understanding, and New Communication Patterns

27:00 — The 80% Open-Rate Email

30:30 — The Job, Defined Simply

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What happens when benchmarking becomes a comfort blanket — and the industry forgets what flexibility really means?

In this episode, Christina Alliak, Director of Benefits at Cohesity, joins Carl and David to explore how the industry got tangled up in comparison reports and legacy systems, and what it’ll take to build something better. Together, they dig into the messy middle between aspiration and reality — from flexible benefits dreams and ancient insurer tech to admin overload, prevention vs. intervention, and the one mistake that taught Christina her biggest lesson about communication.

Episode Breakdown:

00:00 — Intro

03:30 — AI Everywhere (and the Boring Stuff It Should Fix)

05:00 — The Catch: How Do You Learn Without the Boring Work?

08:00 — Benchmarking Is Overrated

10:00 — The Dream of Open Data

13:00 — The Trap of Ease and Expectation

14:30 — Medical Inflation and the Benchmark Box

18:00 — Prevention Beats Intervention

20:00 — Flexibility: The Holy Grail

23:00 — The Dream Model

27:00 — The Marketplace Vision

29:00 — HR Tech, Product Thinking, and Delight

31:00 — The Hidden Cost of Admin

34:00 — Standards, APIs, and Stalemate

41:00 — What AI Needs to Work

43:00 — The Future (and AI Burnout)

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What happens when employee benefits get too complicated, too noisy — and people stop caring?

In this episode of Friends With Benefits, we sit down with Will Winter Smith, Reward Director at Halfords, to explore why traditional benefits strategies are no longer landing with today’s workforce. From private medical that “lost its way” to too many bolt-on products and confusing comms, Will shares a refreshingly honest look at what’s broken — and what actually gets people to engage.

00:00 — Engagement Is Key

03:00 — Private Medical Has Lost Its Way

08:00 — Product Overload and Noise

16:00 — Benchmarking and the Same-Same Trap

17:00 — We’re Retailers to Our Colleagues

21:00 — Guerrilla Marketing and Disruptive Moments

25:00 — ROI and Knowing When to Stop

31:00 — AI Is Like Teaching a Toddler Origami

38:00 — Culture and Trust Around AI

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What does it really look like when you build benefits with inclusion, equity, and integrity from someone who’s worked in both Big Tech and policy?

In this episode of Friends With Benefits, we sit down with Lee from Block (formerly at Google) to dig into what “equity by design” actually means in a global company. Lee shares honest lessons about balancing equality vs equity, navigating local trade‑offs, and why the numbers you benchmark with might mislead more than help.

00:00 — From Social Work to Global Benefits

14:00 — Beyond Tick-Box DEI

28:00 — Building Global Minimums That Scale

35:00 — Communication as an Equity Issue

39:00 — Can AI Help?

46:00 — Practical Steps for Inclusive BenefitsBe the first to know when new episodes drop!

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In this episode of Friends with Benefits, David sits down with global benefits leader Mark to break down the hard-earned lessons from rolling out benefits tech across 50+ countries.From why engagement isn’t just a comms problem to how AI could derail more than it helps, this episode gets into the operational realities most people don’t talk about.They unpack:— Why most global rollouts miss the mark on engagement— How to design for personalisation at scale— The role of consistency vs. autonomy across regions— Where AI fits in and where it really doesn’t— What benefits teams can learn from product teamsIf you’re navigating complexity, scaling strategy, or just trying to get your benefits platform actually used this one’s for you.Timestamps: 00:00 – Getting into Benefits03:50 – Health Benefits Are Underused08:15 – Benefits Are Designed, Not Just Delivered10:45 – The Local vs. Global Trap17:20 – Post-Launch is the Real Work21:50 – Measuring Impact24:40 – The Personalisation Gap36:00 – The Marketing Mindset43:50 – AI, Structure & Scale47:10 – Benefits ConfessionThanks for watching! Subscribe to our channel.

In this episode of Friends with Benefits, Carl and David are joined by Steve Bianchi ex-Unilever, now Chief People Officer at Autodoc. Steve brings his systems mindset, startup grit, and global experience to the table as they unpack everything from UK healthcare policy to why payroll is the most underused channel in benefits comms.

They discuss the limits of fairness, the value of radical transparency, the true cost of “workations,” and why benefit strategies need to move from one-size-fits-all to hyper-personalised at scale. No fluff just sharp, structured thinking from someone who’s built benefits from the ground up.

00:00 – Should companies fill NHS gaps?

08:00 – The real shift post-pandemic

10:00 – Why prevention gets ignored

14:00 – Reimagining the value of healthcare

15:00 – How to build a benefits strategy from scratch

19:00 – Recognition as a benefit

25:00 – Career frameworks as proprietary benefits

27:00 – Trust and transparency over fairness

30:00 – The problem with intangible rewards

35:00 – What matters changes with life stage

38:00 – Why we’re failing on comms

40:00 – Hyper-personalisation is already here

44:00 – Should performance-based benefits exist?

49:00 – What great rewards leaders do now

52:00 – Steve’s Benefit Confession

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In this episode of Friends with Benefits, Carl and David sit down with Jo Viana, Director of Global Benefits at Eventbrite, to get real about what it takes to build benefits that actually matter especially when you’re supporting people across 9+ countries. They dive into the messy realities of global equity, the limits of utilisation metrics, why mental health needs more than a tick-box, and how communication can make or break your benefits strategy. It’s honest, sharp, and full of lessons from someone who's doing the work.

Timestamps:

00:00 – Meet Joana & the Eventbrite landscape

04:30 – The equity balancing act

08:00 – Mental health: usage ≠ impact

15:00 – Breaking stigma through storytelling

22:00 – Making benefits visible

26:00 – AI, access, and cautious optimism

37:00 – When redundancy matters

41:00 – Benefits Confession

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Benefits are bloated. Data is broken. ROI is murky. But people still need support that works.

In this episode of Friends with Benefits, we're joined by John Whitaker, Senior Director of International Benefits at Workday. From decluttering bloated benefit portfolios to the real reasons wellbeing ROI is so hard to prove, John brings a refreshingly honest view of what actually matters in the benefits space. We cover global cost pressures, benefit duplication, the data gaps still holding us back, and why sometimes the best employee experience is just making things work.

Tune in for practical insights, hard truths, and a few benefit confessions you won't forget.

Timestamps:

00:00 – Welcome & intro to John from Workday

03:00 – Why having more benefits isn’t better

07:40 – Wellbeing fatigue & lack of results

12:00 – Budget ≠ impact

14:00 – Personalisation over standardisation

19:00 – Data gaps still hurt decision-making

23:00 – Admin vs. strategy

30:00 – The problem with proving ROI

33:00 – Living your values through benefits

38:00 – Cutting costs without cutting care

40:00 – The value of simplification

42:00 – Benefit confession

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In the very first episode of Friends with Benefits, Carl and David kick things off by diving into the tangled world of employee benefits and why it’s getting harder for companies to get it right.

They share their own career journeys, but more importantly, they lay the foundation for the conversations to come: honest chats with reward leaders, brokers, and consultants who are shaping the future of work.

Timestamps:

02:00 – Why This Podcast Exists

03:00 – The Complexity of Benefits

04:00 – Why Benefits Are Under-Leveraged

06:00 – The Role of Employee Expectations

08:00 – What’s Coming Up on the Podcast

10:00 – Themes to Watch For

17:00 – The AI Question

21:00 – Benefits Confessions

23:00 – Closing Thoughts