The Telegraph Group redesigns benefits package

The Telegraph Group has upgraded its benefits package to help staff through management changes.

The publishing company has introduced a voluntary benefits package that includes a home computing scheme, as well as an on-site GP, to help staff ease into the new regime.

The redesigned offering is the latest move for the group since the Barclay Brothers paid £665m for the business last July.

Earlier this year, the firm cut 300 jobs, including 90 journalists.

HR manager Madeleine Abdoh said: "We are under new management and we also recently experienced redundancy programmes and this is a way of offsetting some of those negatives."

In April, the company, which includes the Daily Telegraph, the Sunday Telegraph and the Spectator, built a new area dedicated to employee health and wellbeing.

Staff can book appointments online with a five-days-a-week on-site GP. They can also take advantage of massages every Friday: "We wanted to offer something that alleviates work discomfort and gives them a bit of TLC," said Abdoh.

In addition, the company has changed employee assistance programme (EAP) providers. "The EAP was offered in the past but there was not enough [internal] publicity around it, so we relaunched it and made the information available through our intranet site," she said.

Workers can access a voluntary benefits scheme, offering discounts on travel, gyms, CDs and insurance, as well as salary sacrifice benefits, including a home computing scheme. "It was really to facilitate the new government sponsored tax-free schemes, such as childcare vouchers," said Abdoh.

The firm also brought in seasonal travel loans in May.

All benefits are now online via its new intranet site. Abdoh said: "We are putting everything on one portal so that when people want to know about their benefits they go to one place. We want to trap their interest and get more feedback from them.

She added that they would be running an employee survey over the next couple of months to find out how the benefits were received.