YOU AND YOUR EMPLOYEE VALUE PROPOSITION

HOW REWARD, BENEFITS, RECOGNITION AND INCENTIVES CAN DELIVER BUSINESS IMPACT AND MAKE A DIFFERENCE TO YOUR PEOPLE.

YOUR EMPLOYEE VALUE PROPOSITION HOW TO GET IT RIGHT

Employee Value Proposition (EVP) is the combination of rewards, benefits and career opportunities employees receive in return for working and performing well for your business. This matters because every employee who works for you today or who may consider working for you in the future, will weigh up this package against what else is on offer in the employment market.

Every employer has an Employee Value Proposition - the only difference between organisations is the extent to which they understand and manage it.

WHY UNDERSTANDING AND DEVELOPING YOUR EVP MATTERS TO YOUR BUSINESS Your EVP has a critical role to play in attracting, retaining and securing the people who will support your mission, aims and values. For people already in your business it also provides the framework for the way you reward and manage performance. A good EVP will: • Engage your employees with the business and what you are trying to achieve, with increased engagement employees are more passionate and much more likely to apply extra discretionary effort • Enable productive working creating an environment where work is enjoyable and rewarding • Energise your employees by supporting their wellbeing and incentivising them to work effectively In other words your EVP gives you the tools to help your business succeed. Your Employee Value Proposition matters because: • Three in four organisations have had problems recruiting in the past year* • 44% of organisations plan to increase headcount in 2015* • 77% of employers had problems retaining staff in the last year* • Barely one in ten employees say their motivation at work is high**

www.edenred.co.uk/ehub | 0844 875 3388* | [email protected]

*CIPD 2015 ** Edenred Barometer 2015

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THE FIVE ELEMENTS OF A

EMPLOYEE VALUE PROPOSITION

Rewards • • • • •

Pay Health benefits Retirement benefits Holiday Fairness

Opportunity • • • • •

Development Career progression Company prospects Meritocracy Industry desirability

Organisation • • • • • • • • • •

Social responsibility Formality Market position Calibre of clients Size Technology Use of technology Approach to risk Empowerment Respect

People • • • • •

Quality of colleagues Quality of managers Calibre of leaders Work environment Recognition as a great employer

Work • • • • • • •

Travel Innovation in the work place Quality of work/services Location Work-life balance Alignment with personal interests Impact

Source: Global Workforce Insights 2013, The Corporate Executive Board Company

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DEFINING AND IMPROVING

YOUR EMPLOYEE VALUE PROPOSITION

While the large majority of organisations will be able to list out precisely the rewards, benefits and development they offer their people, only a few will have considered how their EVP can be understood and developed to drive superior people performance. In our experience, organisations typically fall in to three stages of sophistication, each with its own implications for people and the business. Passively developed EVP – In these organisations, rewards, benefits, incentives and training will be on offer but there is no strategy identifying the kind of employer the organisation wants to be. These businesses struggle to recruit in competitive markets as they grow and when they expand to new locations outside of their home turf. They underestimate their EVP and therefore don’t utilise it to promote themselves as a good employer.

Only a few will have considered how their EVP can be understood developed to drive superior people performance

Emerging EVP – These businesses have a strong culture and sense of the behaviours that contribute to business success. Elements of reward, training and incentives will be aligned to specific business objectives but because an overall strategic approach is lacking, they may not be fully effective. Employees may be eager to join these organisations but employers may experience churn as employees feel frustrated about perceived lack of investment in areas which matter most to them.

Refined EVP – These organisations play close attention to how rewards, benefits and recognition underline and reinforce culture and behaviour. They have a strategic plan to achieve this which is aligned to specific business objectives. In these organisations, employees act as advocates. It is easier to attract talent and there is a consistent employee experience throughout the business which contributes to employee retention.

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Organisations who want improve their EVP should review it and examine these five areas: • Your business – what is it that makes your business special? How is it different from other businesses? • Culture – what behaviours matter to your business and what drives success? • Competition – what do other organisations local to you or in your industry offer? • Job roles – who are the people you need to recruit and what are their expectations? • Your employees – what matters to them, what do they value and where are you failing? Answering these questions will give you a clear idea of your Employee Value Proposition and highlights what you need to change in order to stand out as an employer.

YOUR BUSINESS

CULTURE

JOB ROLES

EVP

COMPETITION

YOUR EMPLOYEES

www.edenred.co.uk/ehub | 0844 875 3388* | [email protected]

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DRIVING YOUR EMPLOYEE VALUE PROPOSITION WITH BENEFITS, REWARD AND RECOGNITION

Compared to an employee’s salary, the investment in reward and benefits per head may be small. But for employees thinking of joining an organisation and those already with you, this plays a critical role in shaping their perceptions and their behaviour. To maximise the impact of non-salary reward and benefits on your Employee Value Proposition, there are four areas you need to consider. 1

EMPLOYEE BENEFITS: GETTING THE RIGHT MIX Employee benefits are a powerful tool for underlining the type of culture you want in your business and in supporting employee wellbeing. An effective benefits mix will cover four categories: • Physical wellbeing - This isn’t just private medical insurance and cash plans but extends to the things that help employees stay healthy in the first place. Subsidising healthy eating through canteens or lunch vouchers, gym membership or Cycle-to-Work schemes fall into this category

For employees thinking of joining an organisation and those already with you, reward and benefits play a critical role in shaping their perceptions and behaviour

• Family wellbeing - Benefits in this category give support for parents, carers and children. Childcare Vouchers are one of the most popular benefits but many employers go further than this to offer support with finding childcare places or arranging emergency childcare. Family coverage for insurance benefits also falls into this category • Financial wellbeing - By far the most important benefit here is the pension scheme. Besides things like death in service and sickness benefits this category also includes financial education, employee discount schemes and voluntary benefits • Career development - Training, contributions to professional development and specific initiatives like maternity coaching fall into this category The final balance of benefits will depend on your resources and the type of employees you have in the business, but it is critical to think how they contribute to perceptions of you as an employer and where there are gaps - and opportunities.

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INCENTIVES AND INCREMENTAL REWARD Incentives and reward schemes play a powerful role in supporting commercial objectives and driving behaviour change. These are used in increasingly diverse ways by employers including: • Identifying cost savings • Generating ideas to improve or develop new products and services • Meeting safety targets • Reducing sickness absence or improving timekeeping • Supporting sales targets for new products, services or customer retention • Exceptional performance • Referring new customers or recruits Incentive schemes can be tailored for specific departments, teams or corporate initiatives as well as being given on an individual level. Technology now allows organisations to reinforce team work by using customer or peer-nominated rewards. Incentives play a powerful role in defining culture and driving behaviour so it is critical for every employer to understand how these can contribute effectively to the Employee Value Proposition in which both the individual and the business benefits.

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EMPLOYEE RECOGNITION Employee recognition is the simple act of thanks for a job well done. Although there will be times when recognition is given alongside some sort of reward, it is critical for employers to ensure their managers and leaders recognise the contribution of employees in their day-to-day work without giving reward. In every organisation there will be managers who do this as second nature and there will be those who fail to recognise the hard work of their people. Recognition schemes can help to ensure that recognition becomes part of the way your managers and leaders work. The scheme will have clear goals, outlining the role employees can play through their behaviour in supporting your culture and business performance, and will help managers understand when recognition should be given. Recognition schemes cover spot recognition for a job well done, exceptional customer service or more formally, employee of the month schemes which have specific targets.

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Social recognition schemes provide a new way of bringing recognition to life among a wide audience with the benefit of being able to measure who is giving recognition and why. Recognition is critical in reinforcing every element of the Employee Value Proposition. 4

BRINGING YOUR EVP TO LIFE: COMMUNICATION The final element to consider in your Employee Value Proposition is planning for how you communicate what you’re doing to support your employees and why you’re doing it.The key areas to think about here are: • Frequency – telling your employees about what you offer, making it relevant to them at different points of the year and when their personal circumstances change • Language – using clear and simple terms to describe what you do and why you do it • Visual identity – many organisations develop an internal look and feel to bring their employer brand to life • Channels – this is where you communicate what you do: mobile, internal social networks, benefits portals, noticeboards, all user emails and company intranet are typically used to deliver communications to employees • People – being clear on who’s responsible for messages about the constituent parts of your Employee Value Proposition. This should include managers, HR and leaders in the business This activity will need to be aligned to any existing internal communications plan, or an excellent opportunity to begin one if your organisation doesn’t have one already.

 

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EDENRED IN ACTION

HOME GROUP BRING EMPLOYEE BENEFITS, WELLBEING AND RECOGNITION TO LIFE WITH THEIR INNOVATIVE PORTAL, REWARD SCENE

Home Group is one of the UK’s largest providers of quality housing and supported housing services. With headquarters in Newcastle and properties across the country the 3,000-strong workforce is geographically dispersed and spread across a variety of functions.

THE CHALLENGE The business wanted to do more to bring its values and employer brand to life, to showcase how the company supports employees with employee benefits and rewards. They also wanted more employees to take advantage of its existing benefit proposition, as well as making them aware of three new benefits. These were being brought on stream in response to feedback from employees about what they would like to be able to use.

BRINGING THE ‘EMPLOYEE VALUE PROPOSITION’ TO LIFE Home Group worked with Edenred to develop a bespoke single signon portal to put all reward and recognition, as well as benefits into one place. These had previously been dispersed across different platforms. The portal was named Reward Scene to reflect the nature of Home Group as a provider of housing and supported housing services in the community. They wanted to create a community of rewards and benefits, presenting the proposition in the form of a street map. The Reward Scene street map consists of three zones: • Benefits Boulevard – the location for all of the employee benefits on offer • Wellbeing Walk – the place for wellbeing related initiatives and benefits • Hero Heights – this took employees to the new peer-to-peer recognition programme, Home Heroes and 4 superhero characters were created to represent each of the 4 Home Group values Edenred and Home Group developed a unique user experience and developed a language which made it easy to find benefits through

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the use of themed street signs relating to each benefit such as Cycle Lane (Cycle to Work), Fitness Flyover (GymFlex) and Recognition Road (reward and recognition). This fun approach encouraged employees to explore what else was on offer and see what they might be missing out on. The new portal also enabled employees to sign up and change their benefits package at any time through flexible benefits – increasing flexibility for them and reducing the administrative overhead for the HR team. To engage employees even further, a one minute video was created for each benefit with a Home Group employee talking about them. The CEO even did a video talking about Reward Scene and finally an animation was created to take employees on a journey around the street map. The three new benefits were - Fitness Flyover (GymFlex), Gadget Gate (home technology purchase scheme) and Restaurant Row (a Gourmet Society card).

LAUNCHING THE SCHEME The team at Home Group recognised an effective launch of Reward Scene would be critical in engaging the 3,000 geographically dispersed employees. To achieve this, the HR team invited staff across all levels and locations to act as reward and recognition ambassadors to help promote and communicate the scheme and they were given training and materials to support them.

The ambassadors also wore branded Home Heroes capes to keep the communication style fun and accessible

On launch day they acted as tour guides, helping staff to navigate through the Reward Scene street map with desk flags that had the message “Ask me about Reward Scene”. The ambassadors also wore branded Home Heroes capes to keep the communication style fun and accessible. This approach created interest and questions about the new scheme from employees. Instead of receiving a top-down corporate message, employee-led curiosity generated a bottom-up desire to know more. On launch, employees also received a printed fold out map of Reward Scene with information about each benefit and a branded sweets box.

BUSINESS IMPACT Six months on from launching Reward Scene, Home Group saw a positive increase in take-up of benefits across the board. This includes benefits with previously low visibility, such as the Cycle to Work scheme. The three new benefits saw a take-up rate of 17% which was a great result. www.edenred.co.uk/ehub | 0844 875 3388* | [email protected]

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Reward Scene has changed the way employees talk about benefits and rewards with each other, referring to benefits by their street name – notably Gadget Gate. In the year since the scheme launched, Home Group has also improved its score in the Great Place to Work survey. The Head of People Services at Home Group said:

Reward Scene provides a highly creative way of helping Home Group employees navigate their full reward, recognition and employee benefits offering in a way which is not only linked to the corporate values but is easy to understand and fun to use.

www.edenred.co.uk/ehub | 0844 875 3388* | [email protected]

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REINFORCING YOUR EMPLOYEE VALUE PROPOSITION WITH EDENRED Edenred helps organisations engage and motivate people to achieve enhanced performance.This is achieved through provision of unique and unrivalled total reward, benefits, incentives and recognition solutions, individually designed to fit your audience, your goals and your budget. We do this through vouchers, prepaid cards, cloud-based technology solutions and digital & SMS products to help engage and motivate your employees, customers and business partners. We can work with you to help develop and implement your Employee Value Proposition to deliver greater business performance and return on investment. Employee Benefits solutions that encompass the management of your flexible and voluntary benefits, employee discounts and salary sacrifice schemes, that can be deployed to drive engagement at a companywide level or focused around specific segments of your workforce. Incentives & Rewards solutions that can motivate create behavioural change and improve performance, centred around the widest choice of reward platforms and mechanisms that offer the recipient the widest choice of redemption options. Expense Management solutions that help streamline and simplify your routine payment processes, reducing administrative burden, saving money and helping make life easier for everyone. Communications Services that ensure your investment in incentives, rewards and benefits are understood, valued and appreciated, delivering maximum return for your business. To find out more, visit www.edenred.co.uk, call us on 0844 875 3388* or email [email protected]

*Calls cost up to 5p per minute plus your phone company's access charge

Hub

For more content like this, visit E.Hub - the HR, reward and benefits knowledge exchange: www.edenred.co.uk/ehub Follow us: https://twitter.com/Edenreduk http://uk.linkedin.com/company/edenred-uk-groupwww.edenred.co.uk/ehub | 0844 875 3388* | [email protected]

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