Snack foods giant strengthens EVP through an improved wellbeing strategy

Mondelēz is one of the world’s leading snack food companies, responsible for the manufacturing and distribution of household brands such as Cadbury, Oreo, Philadelphia and Ritz.

The company employs a workforce of over 80,000 employees across 80 countries worldwide. One particular branch of the organization was looking for new ways to connect more than 2,000 dispersed employees, while centralizing its systems to fuel stronger wellbeing and engagement among employees, especially those who don’t use a computer as part of their day-to-day role.

The challenge:

Mondelēz first reached out to Reward Gateway in September 2019 with two clear challenges in mind. As a world leader in the industry, the company had ambitions to attract and retain the best staff by delivering a health and wellbeing platform to support its people, offer expert tips, encourage discussion and demonstrate commitment to the long-term health and performance of its workforce.

The company was also eager to establish a flexible engagement platform that would reach every single member of its dispersed workforce. Prior to this, it had proven difficult to bring its various offerings under one roof and ensure that key segments such as manufacturing workers and field sales teams were aware of its full range of initiatives, let alone engaging with them.

Mondelēz’s Rewards team made it clear they wanted to align the tone and design of the platform with that of Mondelēz’s core brand, while also creating an engaging hook for the wider program that would help generate buy-in from employees and make it clear that this platform was designed for their benefit.

Rahul Vashist, Head of Rewards and Performance for Mondelēz ANZ & Japan says:

“The levers of engagement within our business are different depending on which area of our workforce we’re aiming to engage. Both the Reward Gateway platform and support team have really helped us to gain buy-in from key employee groups and communicate messages in the right way. It’s proven to be an invaluable partnership that we intend to develop even further over the coming years!”

The approach:

Working closely with Mondelēz, Reward Gateway set about creating a custom, branded platform – "The Right You" – to showcase the company’s three key pillars for employee health and wellbeing: "Right Body," "Right Mind" and "Right Connection." Each of these elements is underpinned by Reward Gateway’s Wellbeing Center, which offers expert guidance and carefully curated video content for employees designed to help them take ownership over their own health and performance.

“We wanted to create a convenient one-stop shop that contains everything our employees need to live a healthier and happier life. People today don’t have a lot of time, so we also wanted this to be easy to access on mobile devices, whereby employees can quickly check tips, workouts or recipes from any location, even when they’re on the go. This has been a great way to reach our frontline workers that don’t tend to use a computer in their day-to-day role,” says Vashist.

Reward Gateway installed an "always-on" feedback system which enables Mondelēz to capture real-time suggestions and employee sentiment around certain wellbeing initiatives. This has allowed The Right You team to develop and roll out suggested initiatives from staff, and demonstrate the company’s commitment to two-way communication. That thread continues through to the platform’s "Stories From Our Colleagues" section, which is a place where employees can support each other by sharing wellbeing and mental health experiences.

Mondelēz was keen to supplement its focus on wellbeing with an exceptional range of employee discounts, again making sure this was just as easy to access on mobile as on desktop. The team settled on SmartSpending™ as the perfect way for employees to purchase instant vouchers and earn cashback on hundreds of well-known retailers that cater to a wide range of tastes and interests, all under one roof.

“We’ve actually found the discounts platform has been a great ‘carrot’ to entice people onto The Right You and start digging deeper into the elements that make up our wider Employee Value Proposition. We can also check the usage stats to react to what’s working well and tailor our approach based on the data. That’s why the flexibility of the platform is so integral for us, so we can pivot our offering when needed and keep things exciting for our people!” says Vashist.

The results:

Following the launch of The Right You and its subsequent impact across employee groups in Australia and New Zealand, the program has now been rolled out internationally as Mondelēz’s main global health and wellbeing initiative. This is a great success for Rahul and his team that demonstrates how powerful the internal brand of the platform has become.

The platform is also fueling stronger awareness and engagement of Mondelēz’s wider Employee Value Proposition, including its discounts, benefits and EAP program.

“Our engagement scores over the past few years have been fantastic, and that definitely coincides with the work we’ve been doing with The Right You platform. The overall feedback from our employees has been great, particularly around employee care and wellbeing support. Our performance as a business has also seen a noticeable upturn over the past few years and I believe part of that stems from the fact our employees now feel more supported, more resilient and more engaged with us as an employer.”