Industry:
Banking & Finance
Number of employees:
1,980+
Number of locations:
26
Platform features:
Employee benefits
The challenge
In September 2018, the team at St. James’s Place Wealth Management worked with Reward Gateway to launch the My Rewards portal to all of its employees based in the UK. The team’s aim was to revamp and enhance their employee benefits proposition to be in line with company growth and development. With an increasing number of employees and a shift towards agile and flexible working, they needed a benefits offering that could keep up.
The team’s vision was to bring all rewards into one central hub that could be accessed on all devices, both in and out of the office. Previous communications around rewards had been all over the place – scattered across the intranet, printed out and pinned up in cupboards or available from HR upon request.
The benefits themselves needed a boost, too. An employee opinion survey at St James’s Place revealed a 5% decrease in employee satisfaction with their benefits package. The team also saw potential new hires turning the company down due to what benefits were offered. It became clear that they needed to evolve with the times and provide more flexible and diverse offerings. The package they had was largely traditional, with pension, medical and protection benefits. The team wanted to tie in a new platform with new and exciting benefits, all in one launch.
The approach
The team had a very ambitious timeline of four months to develop the new benefits and implement the portal. Despite some major IT issues, the team persevered, determined to successfully launch on their planned go-live date of 10th September 2018.
When it came to branding, the team were keen to ensure the visuals would reflect the new, forward-thinking rewards offering. With My Rewards, they wanted to step away from the organisation’s visuals, comprising navy blue and stone pillars. Instead, they introduced a wider colour palette with new fonts and flat icons of geometric shapes for a contemporary look.
One of the achievements that the team was most proud of was their unconventional communication plan for the new rewards offering. They ran a teaser campaign, slowly revealing information about My Rewards, building curiosity and excitement over a three-week period. They distributed KitKats to each staff member with postcards signed by the company’s directors, encouraging employees to “Have a break” and take a look around the new platform.
The team also invited all employees to sign up for fun and casual demos, streamed on video so that staff in other locations could join in. Finally, they sent out personalised emails to all employees from the HR Director, thanking and recognising staff for their dedication and hard work ahead of the new offerings.