Kathryn Finch, reward consultant at Experian, explains that this feedback is the basis behind the popularity of the credit risk management’s firm voluntary benefits scheme. “Our employees told us that the opportunity to flex their holiday allowance was important to them so we built our voluntary benefits scheme from there,” she says. “We rolled it out in two phases, launching holiday buy and a refresh of childcare vouchers and bikes for work first.
”We then followed this with a second phase a few months later with a number of health and wellbeing benefits, including gym vouchers and health assessments.”
Experian also invested heavily in communicating the launches, stepping away from a corporate look and feel, and selecting branding and imagery that it hoped employees could connect with. “We also ran a number of roadshows for employees to come and talk to us about the choices available to them and answer any questions they had,” Finch says.
Feedback has been extremely positive so far and, following each launch, the organisation surveyed a cross section of employees to test what else they might like it to consider. “Our recent people survey results have confirmed that employees really value the changes we have made,” says Finch.
Experian is currently in the early stages of evaluating a number of other voluntary benefit options, including technology salary sacrifice and financial education.
