Specsavers has launched an employee discounts website to cater to staff across its UK and Guernsey offices.

Of the organisation’s 1,000 staff, just over 500 are based in Guernsey. Specsavers Perks, provided by Asperity Employee Benefits, was introduced to ensure that staff had offers that were applicable to them at the local level.

Mary Jane Seddon, senior manager of reward and policy at Specsavers, said: “Half our staff are based in Guernsey and the scheme we did have was very specific to UK-based staff.

"Quite a lot of work had been done to have some Guernsey offers in there. It is now a far more dynamic, user-friendly and Guernsey-friendly offer to complement the rest of our reward package.”

The website can be accessed at the office through the organisation’s intranet or at home. It includes around 4,000 offers including high street retailer, holiday and insurance discounts.

The discounts can be accessed by ordering paper vouchers which are posted out to staff, shopping online or purchasing reloadable cards.

The launch was done in stages. At the beginning of 2011 the HR team nominated Guernsey-based champions to pilot the website, and to provide feedback on what is offered and where they shop in Guernsey.

“We canvassed a good proportion of our Guernsey staff to find out how it would work for them,” said Seddon. “Out of 24 focused offers, 22 are available to Guernsey staff. The only two were Asda and Sainsbury’s which do not trade in Guernsey.”

A teaser campaign started two weeks before the launch with posters and flyers up in offices. In the week before the launch the teaser campaign was carried on to Specsavers’ intranet site.

The launch itself focused around an intranet-based game of bingo where company logos such as Monsoon, Body Shop and Amazon were called and then staff marked them off on their bingo card. Winners received vouchers of their choice to spend on the website.

Seddon added: “Staff were logging into our perks pages on a daily basis to play the game, and that created loads of interest.”

Take up of the scheme reached 40% in its first week. As of 18 May sales reached £13,000 and staff had already made savings of £1,000.

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