Reach still wanted to reward each employee to the value of £25 to ensure staff were still recognised for their efforts and importantly they were rewarded fairly and in a way that was personal and valuable to them.
Success story: Reach plc
With the help of the Reward and Recognition module within their bespoke employee benefits platform, Reach boosted engagement, platform registrations and successfully rewarded their team over the festive period and beyond.
Background
Reach plc is one of the UK’s largest media publishers with over 4,000 staff across various locations in the UK and ROI.
Listed in the Top 50 UK employers for inclusivity, Reach’s employee profile covers a wide range of generations with a multi-skilled and highly educated team.
“We’re evolving our approach to recognise that ‘life happens’ and support all of our employees as individuals, so they can achieve excellence for our business and grow and develop in their careers, while also thriving outside the workplace.” – Reach plc, Our Strategy
A core part of its overall business strategy is its culture. As part of this, diversity and inclusion play a huge role with a dedicated D&I team and various supporting programmes and practices at Reach. For Reach, like many HR teams, the pandemic threw many challenges its way in terms of wellbeing, job flexibility and balance.
The situation
At the end of an incredibly tough year in 2020, rewarding teams effectively was high on the agenda for many HR teams. Historically, Reach would organise their festive celebrations each year to the value of £25 per employee.
With this no longer possible due to Covid restrictions, Reach came to us with the intention of taking advantage of this new, digital focus to take their reward online.
Personal reward
Gift card technology
They wanted to give all their staff a £25 gift card to use at a retailer of their choice to give flexibility over how employees used their reward while utilising the technology available to reward digitally.
Quick and easy to manage
The solution would need to be quick, simple and easy to manage and administrate but still deliver what was required.
The solution
We worked with Reach to combine two areas of their employee benefits platform to provide a truly unique and innovative solution to their problem.
We pioneered this technology specifically to solve Reach’s problem and have since made this available to be rolled out to new and existing clients.
Combining two features into one solution
We decided to combine two areas of the platform to provide the most appropriate solution.
These would be the Reward section of Reach’s bespoke employee benefits platform and the Instant Discounts scheme which included a wide range of retailers to choose from.
Employees had two options, they could either redeem their £25 voucher with a retailer of their choice or choose to donate the sum to Reach’s chosen charity.
Complete with communications
For employees who wanted to redeem their voucher, we added £25 to their Reward module on their employee benefits platform and developed bespoke communications for Reach to thank employees for their hard work and dedication over the previous 12 months.
This ultimately boosted their platform engagement and recognised employees across the businesses effectively.
Not only did this help reward and engage Reach employees, but it also encouraged those who hadn’t yet registered to use Reach’s employee benefits platform to do so and access the wide range of employee benefits they had available to them.
Boosting engagement and improving the employee benefits experience
For those redeeming their voucher, it would take a matter of seconds before their voucher was ready to use through the Instant Discounts scheme.
Aside from the reward, the Instant Discounts scheme could be used to save at a huge range of retailers.
Reach employees who were now newly registered to use the platform, alongside those already registered, now had access a wide range of employee benefit schemes including salary sacrifice, financial wellbeing, health and wellbeing and lifestyle and discount schemes alongside a dedicated lifestyle and discounts app.
The results
%
Increase in platform registrations through the scheme
£
in rewards redeemed by Reach employees through the scheme
increase in average employee engagement score
The scheme’s first run was in December 2020. Through our development and implementation of a digital reward solution, Reach saw an additional 650 new employee registrations on their bespoke employee benefits platform compared to a monthly average of 35 for previous months, representing a 32% increase in total registered employees on the platform.
Over 2,000 employees redeemed their £25 reward through their employee benefits platform at their chosen retailers.
With the charity donation option, Reach employees raised a staggering £34,500 for International children’s charity Save the Children.
Engagement with other employee benefits hosted through the platform also increased in the following weeks and months thanks to the influx of new registrations and logins, emphasising the importance of combining employee benefits and reward into one bespoke platform.
Due to its success, Reach also ran the scheme in December 2021, this time with over 2,300 rewards redeemed and an additional 470 new registrations, representing a further increase of 14% in new platform registrations.
They also raised a further £23,600 for their chosen charity MIND, taking their total raised for charity through the scheme to £58,100.
Reach now have over 4,000 registered employees on their Reach Your Benefits employee benefits platform with that number continuing to increase.
Reach also reported an average employee engagement score of 7.4, increased from 7.1 in 2022.
Reach continue to invest in their employees through their bespoke employee benefits platform, adding new schemes and working with Access Engage to implement new features to improve employee engagement and reward their team effectively.
Reach Your Benefits
Reach have worked with Access since 2018 to develop their bespoke Reach Your Benefits employee benefits platform and reward solutions.
Over 4,000 registered employees across the UK and ROI have access to a wide range of employee benefits through their platform and dedicated app, ranging from health and wellbeing, financial wellbeing, salary sacrifice, lifestyle and employee discounts.
Their range of schemes includes an extensive Car Benefit scheme, Holiday Trading, Technology Scheme, Gym Scheme, Dental Cover along with an extensive range of employee discounts available through the Salary Extras app, plus many more benefits, all alongside their bespoke reward module.
We’ve also developed bespoke employee benefit communications designed to boost engagement and platform registrations which have contributed to the overall success of the platform for both Reach and their employees.
Every solution, in one place, for your people
The Access Group's HCM division, Access People, offer an unrivalled suite of solutions for businesses, including HR and Payroll, Absence Management, Workforce Management, Compliance, Recruitment, Talent, Learning, Employee Benefits and Engagement, Health & Safety, all of which are underpinned by the powerful Access Workspace platform.
The Access Group is one of the leading providers of business management software to small and mid-sized organisations in the UK, Ireland, and Asia Pacific. We help over 100,000 customers across commercial and not-for-profit sectors become more productive and efficient.