A recent survey conducted by Zeta revealed that has found that 62% employees find the claim submission process is time-consuming. The Zeta Employee Benefits Study* commissioned to Nielsen India found out that one in every four salaried employees in the taxable bracket is not aware of the tax saving reimbursement potential offered by some employee tax benefits.

As per the study which covered 194 companies and 1233 employees across the country, mobile and internet reimbursement is the most popular employee tax benefits offered by companies, followed fuel, LTA and Gadget reimbursement. 

However, 94% of companies still use complex and time-consuming paper-based processes when it comes to managing these employee tax reimbursements.

Ramki Gaddipati, CTO and Co-founder, Zeta stated, “The administration of employee benefits in India is lagging behind in many ways. The survey ratifies our belief that employees waste a lot of their productive time in mundane activities like storing bills, submitting paper-based claims. Only 6% of companies in India use a completely digital process for reimbursements. Due to the complex time-consuming paperwork, many employees prefer to opt out of the benefit because they are not able to derive value for the benefit.” 

Other major findings of the study include-

• The survey found that an employee spends an average 23 minutes just to submit a single bill claim and 41% employees need to submit one claim form per claim. 
  
  
• Meanwhile, close to 47% companies claim managing paper bills, especially illegible and invalid ones is their biggest challenge. 
  
  
• 71% of companies take 8 days or more to process each claim, with some taking even more than 2 weeks. 
  
  
• Among employees that opt out of tax saving reimbursements, 56% of them do so for higher in-hand salary, thereby not using the full potential of the tax benefits offered to them. 
  
  
• Two in every three companies surveyed feel the time and cost spent on managing tax benefits exceed the actual benefit to the employee.
  
  
• 90% employees said they prefer a fully digital reimbursements process.
  
  
• Only 6% of all companies surveyed provide a fully digital reimbursements process.

The study which takes an in-depth look at the employee tax benefits and its current state in India clearly points out that there is a need for companies to make the process of availing benefits digital and less cumbersome. Especially, when 100% of the employees interviewed during this survey owned a smartphone and had access to the internet on a daily basis. But only 6% of all companies surveyed provide a fully digital reimbursements process.

Bhavin Turakhia, CEO and Co-Founder, Zeta said, "90% employees prefer digital claims over a paper-based process. With India changing gears to become a more digitally-driven nation, the way we run our organizations also needs to change. Although we have several employee benefits in place, the lack of digitization is an area of concern given the fact that we have a young tech-savvy workforce in the country. Most importantly, a digital transition will ensure faster processes, significant cost savings for companies and transparent functioning."