Data organisation Callcredit Information Group re-launched its flexible benefits package for its 1,000 UK-based staff in May 2015, creating its mobile-optimised benefits brand Benefits for People Like You.
The organisation enhanced its package by adding new benefits that included a car salary sacrifice arrangement, bikes-for-work scheme and childcare vouchers. In addition, it opened up access to its benefits by using a rolling, year-round enrolment method where possible, supported by its new web-based platform.
Tim Simpson, head of reward and HR administration at Callcredit Information Group, says: “The rolling enrolment is essentially the choice aspect but it’s also a good reminder of the benefits that [employees have] got all the time. If [employers] only have a single window, then [employees] forget what benefits they’ve got on offer. It really is about facilitating choice.”
Callcredit also added further options to allow staff to personalise their benefits. This includes the option to add dependants or partners to private medical insurance (PMI) or critical illness insurance, as well as the ability to flex cover levels up or down on benefits such as group income protection or life assurance, which can be traded down to two-times’ salary or traded up to 10-times’ salary. Staff can also buy and sell holiday days.
To communicate these changes to staff and to ensure employees have a thorough understanding of what they could gain from engaging with the flexible benefits scheme, Callcredit used employee profiling, carried out in late 2014 to early 2015, to create eight avatars that reflect different personal characteristics. Staff could then take an online quiz to see which avatar they most resembled and thereby discover which benefits may be of the most interest to them depending on their needs and wants. This enabled staff to make more informed decisions around their benefits selections.
The re-launch of its flexible benefits scheme has been a success; 89% of employees logged on to the new benefits portal up from 10% who logged on to the previous platform. Of those who logged on to the new site, 72% have gone on to make benefit elections.
Julie Wright, HR director at Callcredit, says: “Having more flexibility around the benefits we offer is one of those areas that [an organisation needs] to be offering as an attractive employer that is going to get the best talent. [The] big thing for us was around offering people choice in how they took their [benefits].”
Callcredit won the Employee Benefits Award 2016 for best flexible benefits plan.