Due to the pandemic and changing employee needs, Reach needed to take their reward strategy digital. 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.
Reach plc are one of the UK’s largest media publishers with over 4,000 staff across various locations in the UK and ROI. Under the Reach umbrella are over 130 trusted national and local media brands, reaching 80% of the UK online population. 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.
A core part of their overall business strategy is their 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 their way in terms of wellbeing, job flexibility and balance.
“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
In terms of reward, the pandemic also threw several challenges the way of the HR and reward team at Reach. How Reach historically rewarded employees over the festive period would no longer be an option, and a digital approach was now needed.
How Reach switched to a digital-focused reward strategy
Due to the pandemic and social-distancing in 2020 and beyond, many businesses were left looking for alternative ways to reward their teams through the festive period with the usual yearly celebrations no-longer possible.
Equally, at the end of an incredibly tough year, 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, Reach came to us with the intention of taking advantage of this new, digital focus to take their reward online.
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.
They wanted to give all their staff a £25 gift card to use at a retailer of their choice to ensure that not only were their employees rewarded but rewarded in a way that was personal to them.
The solution would need to be quick, simple and easy to manage and administrate but still deliver what was required.
The 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.
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, which would ultimately boost their platform engagement and recognise 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 benefits they had available to them.
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
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 caboodle to implement new features to improve employee engagement and reward their team effectively.
Reach Your Benefits
Reach have worked with Caboodle 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.
Discover our employee benefits platform options or get in touch for more information.
