The One With Adam Newton from Fastmarkets: What a 15-Month Global Benefits Implementation Actually Looks Like

Global benefits transformation looks straightforward on a slide. It is not. Adam Newton, Head of Reward at Fastmarkets, joins Carl and David to talk through what it actually took to centralise and implement a global benefits programme across a highly dispersed international workforce.

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About the guest

Adam Newton, Head of Reward at Fastmarkets

Adam Newton is a reward professional who has spent his entire career in the specialism — across cash comp, equity, bonus, and increasingly, benefits. He is currently Head of Reward at Fastmarkets, a global price reporting and data organisation, where he led a 15-month global benefits implementation that brought a disparate, country-by-country benefits landscape onto a single global platform with a centralised flex allowance.

Before Fastmarkets, Adam held senior reward roles at G-Research, Associated British Foods, Misys, and Catlin. He studied Human Resource Management at the University of Leeds.

Summary

Adam joins Carl and David for a candid conversation on what a global benefits transformation actually involves when you're a lean team operating across many markets with very different levels of maturity.

When Adam joined Fastmarkets, benefits were fragmented — some countries running flex, others doing very little, some office managers simply calling their broker and asking for the same again. The goal was to centralise, set minimum standards, introduce a global flex allowance, and bring everything onto one platform.

Fifteen months later, he has an honest view of what went well, what he underestimated, and what the next phase looks like.

They also dig into:

• Why 60–75% benefits engagement is considered good — and what that number actually tells you
• The Finland problem: a well-intentioned launch that landed flat because of one tax rule nobody had checked
• Why payroll errors during implementation are the ones you cannot afford
• How medical inflation is forcing difficult conversations that no benefits philosophy fully prepares you for
• Why the flex debate isn't really about flex — it's about paternalism, guardrails, and what happens when employees make short-term decisions
• The hot take: your benefits platform is only as good as your supplier's systems — and a lot of those suppliers are still running on 30-year-old technology

This episode is about what global benefits transformation looks like from the inside — the ambition, the friction, and the lessons you only learn by doing it.

Topics on the table:

• Benefits engagement benchmarks: what does good actually look like?
• Centralising benefits across a globally dispersed workforce
• Setting minimum standards without taking anything away
• Running a global broker process and consolidating costs
• The flex allowance model: guardrails, cash opt-out, and the paternalism question
• Country-by-country maturity and the low headcount problem
• The Finland moment: tax rules, lost in translation
• Payroll integration errors and why you need to test early
• Medical inflation and the compound cost problem
• Total reward statements as a communication tool
• Benefits comms and avoiding the discount portal problem
• Supplier systems: old technology, billing errors, and the efficiency ceiling

00:25 — A Reward Guy Who Discovered Benefits

"I probably fell into reward at the beginning of my career and done it for the whole of my career. Very much got into benefits in the last five years — done a lot of benefit implementations and got much more interest in the detail."

04:00 — What Good Engagement Actually Looks Like

"Two leading brokers and consultancies are talking between 60 and 75% engagement as good, if you don't have cash to take out. We're sitting roughly in that range. Some countries are better, some countries are worse."

05:02 — What Adam Walked Into at Fastmarkets

"Some countries were doing flex. Some countries were doing very little. Some countries the office manager would call the broker and say, can I have the same again please, not so expensive. A real mix."

09:10 — The Finland Moment

"We went in all singing and dancing with ClassPass and it landed flat. Lost in translation — we didn't understand there was another way to provide the gym benefit that was tax free. We had to pivot."

10:40 — The Timeline Was Too Ambitious

"I was going to have this all done within nine months, which for a team of a couple of people was far, far too ambitious. I also handle the reward elements of the business. So that was probably too ambitious looking back."

11:40 — Test Payroll Before You Go Live

"We had some hiccups in the early days with payroll. To have that tested on the outset in advance of going live — it's always better."

15:26 — Phase Two: Making People Understand the Value

"We've implemented it globally. Now we want to talk to employees and say, we invest a lot of money into you. Show them total reward statements globally — and then go back around that feedback loop and say, so what do you value and what do you not value?"

17:00 — Too Many Benefits Can Become a Catalogue

"You're scrolling down the screen, there's 30 things to choose from. One of our challenges this year is about comms — showcasing benefits more often so people go, 'I didn't know you did will writing.' Because it was just a bit too much at annual enrolment."

21:00 — Medical Inflation Is a Hard Conversation

"You look at that compound inflation and it's scary. The numbers that come back are quite overwhelming. If the cost continues to go up, it's going to involve some difficult conversations."

27:35 — Why We Don't Let People Take Cash Out

"We took a relatively hard line and said we don't want people to take cash out of the allowance. We want it used on benefits. People make short-term decisions and you care about your employees — you don't want them to get into hard times because of a choice they made under pressure."

30:27 — The Hot Take: You're Only As Good As Your Supplier's Systems

"You can put in a really modern flex system that's very adaptable. But you're only ever as good as your supplier systems. We've been seeing supplier systems that haven't been updated in 30 years. Regardless of how advanced your platform is, if your third party is still using old systems, you're never actually going to get true efficiency."