Co-op was presented with the highly coveted Grand Prix award at the Employee Benefits Awards 2024, which took place on Friday 14 June at The Honourable Artillery Company (HAC) in London last week.
The Grand Prix is the ‘winner of winners’ accolade and is selected from the winning entries across all other categories. It is given to the organisation that most impressed judges throughout the process with its overall achievements.
Co-op was the winning entry in the Best financial wellbeing strategy – large employer category at the 22nd annual Employee Benefits Awards. It scooped the top prize due to the success of its default opt-in workplace savings trial, whereby some employees set aside £40 of their pay each pay period through the retailer’s financial benefits platform.
The judges said that Co-op’s financial wellbeing strategy of auto-enrolling staff into the savings scheme was brave, and solved an issue it had identified in its workforce after conducting research.
Alex Henley, wellbeing consultant at Co-op (pictured above), said: “We’re very happy to have won, it’s really exciting. I’m really pleased for all the people who helped us to do this and delighted that we can support our employees. They told us that saving was crucial to them and what they wanted to achieve, and we helped them to do that with our benefits strategy.
“It paints a picture of how we can help people in the future if they are moderate to low earners; they came back to us afterwards with great feedback. Starting saving can be a hard thing to do, but once they get going it can change things for them and give them opportunities that they didn’t have before.”
Employee Benefits extends its congratulations to all of the winners, highly commended entries, and finalists for the awards this year, which represented the most exciting and innovative HR reward and benefits strategies, supportive teams and outstanding individuals in the field of reward and benefits.
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Employee Benefits would like to thank the event sponsors, esteemed judging panel and all of the organisations that entered the awards. Keep an eye out on the Employee Benefits website for more details about the winning entries and a gallery of highlights from the event.
More details about the Employee Benefits Awards 2025 will be given later this year.