Three UK brings to life its wellbeing strategy by communicating benefits in real life situations for its employees to relate to.
The British telecommunications organisations that employs just under 5,000 employees is trying to expand away from traditional benefits and focus on wellbeing, and wants employees to visualise benefits in their day-to-day lives, creating communications that make the benefits more relatable. It is also introducing benefits that capture the social side of the organisation.
At the beginning of 2017, the organisation introduced wellness Wednesdays which gives its employees the opportunity to have time out for two hours every Wednesday.
Jessica Goodall, people propositions consultant at Three UK, says: “Employees can get two hours every Wednesday to go out and achieve wellness which can be anything from going to the gym or out to lunch with the team. It's about taking those two hours where employees are not really allowed to answer any emails or do any work, they should be doing something for themselves instead.
“There’s a completely wide range of things that people can do and that's why we launched tastecard, you can go out and get lunch, you can take a friend, it's creating the the social side of work.”
"We have an employee who used his wellness Wednesdays to write a book and it's just been published," Goodall adds.
Listening to employees
Wellness Wednesdays is an incredibly popular benefit, receiving great feedback from its employees. Three UK relies on employee input to ensure they are getting it right when it comes to its benefits strategy and they have a strong business forum which is just one way alongside it's sense check surveys, that employees can articulate how they feel.
There are representatives from all areas of the business, with 100 employees currently manning the forum. The panel meet up on a bi-monthly basis and discuss any burning issues that the employees in their allocated region might have. Three UK see it as a great opportunity to find out if they are getting it right and gain an insight into what employees want in future. It is also a platform for Three UK to update employees on matters relating to the organisation.
“Employees can give us feedback via our listening posts,” explains Goodall. “What that means is that every other month there’s an opportunity for employees to feedback to us on how we’re doing and what they want. For one to two hours, the representatives will sit in a room and cover what they think is important to tell employees. Everyone is invited, employees can drop in to share their views and get updates. It’s just a way of airing your views in a less formal way and then issues can get escalated back up and be heard by the people who can make changes.”
Taking action from feedback
Three UK takes on board all the feedback it gets from the listening posts, as well as through its sense check surveys.
Last year Three UK’s research project team focused on employees’ annual leave. Through its sense check survey and additional focus groups across the business, the organisation identified the need for change and introduced three personal days which came into effect on 1 January 2018.
“We are fun and quirky at Three because that is our brand and ultimately that is our culture. Other organisations offer employees a day's annual leave for getting married for example, but what we wanted to recognise that everyone is different and we didn't want to assume that an employee wants their birthday off because some employees don't,” Goodall explains.
“We introduced three personal days so employees can use them for those moments that matter, those special events that happen in their lives. An employee's birthday might be one, even having a driving tests, it’s those things that people don't want to use their holiday for. We received really positive feedback from one employee who said he’d never been able to see his kid play football after school, and even though it might not seem a big thing looking from the outside, but to him it was. It can be really special for them and can make a real difference in their lives.”
Creating an inclusive culture
Three UK believe that a company culture should be inclusive and offering personalised days off is just one of its many benefits. Three UK wants to ensure that all of its employees on site at its retail outlets are included and benefits are not exclusive to head office employees so as much as possible, the organisation introduces non-site specific benefits, for example, in 2017 they gave every employee a tastecard.
“One of our philosophies is being inclusive. With so many employees based out in retail it can be really difficult when you launch something to get the engagement,” says Goodall. “It's really easy to get suppliers in on site [at Three UK’s head offices]. What we did by launching tastecard was to make sure that everybody across the company could have access to it. It doesn't matter what an employee’s salary is, it was available to them.”
The organisation has also launched a digital GP service across the business. Goodall explains that Three UK didn’t want to have a GP onsite, as again, this wouldn’t benefit to all of its employees. The organisation has also opened the benefit up to employees’ immediate family as a flexible benefit.
“From an inclusive point of view, we know it's not just about wellness for an employee, it's how they can build those connections with their family, take the tastecard for example which employees can also use to treat their family, [as well as extending the virtual GP service to include close family members]."
Digital communication is key
Communicating what benefits are on offer is also a key part of Three UK’s benefits strategy. Being a telecommunications company, the organisation has a paperless strategy with text messages, emails at the forefront of their campaigns. There is also an intranet which hosts all of the vital information an employee needs about the company and its benefits.
“Everyone in the company has a phone they can access the intranet through, it's completely mobile phone enabled. We try and focus on different benefits depending on what the key window is, for example in March it was all around childcare vouchers, until the government changed their mind at the last minute, and with auto enrolment pensions, we changed our employee pension contributions so we channeled that through the intranet."
The organisation is also keen to bring benefits to life with face-to-face communications particularly in its Reading and Maidenhead offices with big screens, retail roadshows and advisers on hand to tell educate employees on the benefits on offer. Managers from the retail stores are also invited to attend so they can take the knowledge they have gained back in store and educate their staff rather than employees outside of the head office only being reliant on technology to gain an insight into the benefits on offer.
Another key part of the communication strategy at Three UK is creating a story that is engaging for employees says Goodall. “We don't want benefits simply dropped in isolation and people either thinking 'that’s great' or 'why am I doing that?' When we launched the virtual GP service, we communicated it around a mental health piece, we were trying to educate employees and provide them with an additional services outside of the NHS, and they could really see that."
Getting it right
Through the organisation's employee forums and surveys, it is able to measure how effective its benefits are and it has seen its wellness score at its highest point to date. Its sense check survey, which is sent out two or three times per year, allows employees to rate their benefits package, as well as give valued feedback.
Although that will not stop the organisations striving to do better, says Goodall. "We are obviously always looking to improve our offering and that’s what we’re looking to do this year. It’s not a case of we tick that box and it’s done, it’s more of a case of how we evolve and we kind of develop it even further because employee's expectations are becoming higher, and it’s about being more creative and coming up with unusual ideas. That's what really challenges us and makes it more interesting on a day-to-day basis."
As well as establishing what the organisation have got right, it also enables the organisation to discover if any benefits are not achieving what they set out to do. For example, its medical cash plan’s take up was extremely low due to a rise in premiums. The organisation proactively changed suppliers to make it a more affordable benefit and realigned its objectives to make it work more effectively.
Three UK at a glance
Three UK, formerly known as Hutchison 3G, began operating in the mobile telephone industry on 3 March 2003.
Its parent company, Hutchison Whampoa, operates global businesses in telecommunications, ports and related services, property and hotels, retail and manufacturing, and energy and infrastructure.
The telecoms group has a strong presence in Asia, and has operations in Australia, the UK, Ireland, Italy, Sweden, Denmark and Austria.
Three has almost 5,000 staff in the UK and is headquartered in Maidenhead. It also has an office in Glasgow and Maidenhead, with 320 stores around the UK. The average age of employees is 35, with the average length of service three years.
Business objectives
- To focus benefit strategy on wellbeing more than traditional benefits
- To keep focusing on creating an inclusive culture
- Continuing to listen to employees through its forum
Career history
Jessica Goodall joined Three UK in 2015 as a reward consultant. In February 2018, due to a department restructure, Goodall took on her current role as people propositions consultant. The role saw the rewards and people team aligned with the customer team. Before joining Three UK, Goodall spend six years at Auto Trader's head office in Reading, working in a number of roles including head of HR portal and benefits and reward and analytics manager.