Staff feedback played a key role in structuring benefits at mobile phone company Hutchison 3G UK, known as 3.
The company formed three working groups in the head office, retail and call centre parts of the business to offer advice on what its 3,200 UK employees wanted in their benefits package. Seth Russell, director of reward, says:
"We wanted everyone to have access to it and we wanted it to have something for everyone."
Retail discounts were central to the company's integrated online voluntary and flexible benefits plans because they received what Russell describes as an a "overwhelming" positive level of feedback, particularly from staff in the retail side of the business, who tend to be younger than colleagues in the other divisions.
Three meetings of each group were held in the six months leading up to the schemes' launch at 3's head office in Maidenhead. Judging by its take-up rates, the consultative approach was successful. Of the company's total workforce, 92% of head office, 71% of contact centre and 32% of retail staff made a choice under the flex plan.
"It reinforced what we thought," says Russell, "that in different parts of the business, employees wanted different things."
