Voluntary benefits programmes, which offer employees discounts and savings on their everyday shopping, can drive significant levels of engagement.
We have seen that employees are attracted to these small perks, be it 5% off a Sainsbury’s grocery shop or discounts at Topshop, because they deliver a real benefit with savings staff can apply to their lifestyle.
But employers could get more out of their voluntary benefits platforms.
Eli Lilly teamed up with Next Jump to launch a combined voluntary benefits and reward and recognition platform in July 2012. Some of the insights we have drawn from a year-long experiment include how Lilly drove higher levels of engagement, greater employee satisfaction, and created a stronger culture of recognition.
Driving engagement
Lilly has long believed it is important to recognise employees for their efforts, and that employee engagement helps deliver superior business results. With Lilly already having an exceptionally high registration rate on its voluntary benefits platform (92% of its 2,328 employees have registered for the programme), our teams jointly explored how we could utilise this high level of engagement to match this belief.
In early 2013, the My Recognition programme was launched in a bid to extend the engagement from traditional voluntary benefits into reward and recognition, to reduce administrative time spent on managing recognition, and to allow employee choice and flexibility in terms of redemption options.
Lilly employees earn a loyalty currency called WowPoints by shopping through their voluntary benefits platform. WowPoints are similar to cashback and can be used to buy goods and services.
Lilly now uses the same currency to award its employees for years of service with the organisation, achieving business results, and demonstrating positive behaviours linked to Lilly’s core values. Employees can combine the WowPoints they have received from an award with WowPoints they have earned while shopping to purchase goods and services of their choice.
The programme also enables them to top up with cash if they don’t have enough WowPoints for a purchase.
Peer-to-peer recognition
Until 2012, recognition at Lilly was delivered in an ad-hoc manner, supported by a manual voucher request process. The new platform is online, built directly into the voluntary benefits platform, and allows for instant recognition via thank-you cards from colleagues and instant monetary recognition from supervisors.
Lilly has found that enabling a system for peers to thank each other can be just as valuable as distributing WowPoints as a reward for work on hitting a goal or project.
Awards are broken down into relevant business areas and communicated through the platform, with automated rules in place to make sure supervisors are giving awards to employees in their own division.
Award categories tie directly to the service value chain and seek to embed, promote and reinforce effective behaviours.
Long-service awards
Long-service awards are also automated through the system, and built-in communications notify recipients and their managers of awards.
During this period, Lilly saw a fourfold increase in the number of unique employees receiving recognition.
The combined programme has also led to a major reduction in the administrative cost and burden to Lilly, while increasing employee choice of retailers from a handful to more than 1,000. Testimonials from employees confirm that they appreciate the additional choice and flexibility the new system offers, including being able to purchase goods and services at current retail and sale prices.
The combination of programmes has also proved to have additional synergies. Employees who have received recognition tend to then use the voluntary benefits part of the platform three times more than the average employee, reinforcing the original benefit.
Noreen Kara is senior associate at Next Jump.
