Enterprise travel and transport platform refreshes benefits brand to increase usage by 65% and better educate employees on total reward

TfL has been responsible for keeping public transport in London moving since 2000. In 2015, at the time of reviewing its communications strategy, TfL had 24,000 employees working across more than 500 locations, with many employees working offline and remotely.

The challenge

Transport for London (TfL) has partnered with Reward Gateway since 2010, providing employee discounts and other benefits through “myTfL.” In that time, the perception of reward was suffering and directly impacting employee engagement. While an impressive 90% of TfL’s workforce were registered with the website, only 22% were accessing it each month, which was largely due to the one-note nature of the platform. TfL knew it would need to increase awareness by redefining its communication strategy to drive up usage, better educate employees and improve the perception of the wider reward package.

Upgrading to Reward Gateway’s all-encompassing employee engagement hub in 2015 - which maximizes benefits through an easy to use platform with options to add additional content, encourages repeat visits. With no additional budget, the TfL team needed to find innovative communication ideas at no extra cost.

The approach

In order to reach as many employees with its new communication strategy and technology as possible, the TfL team involved communication experts from each business area and held focus groups. They consulted on what worked well and what didn’t, finding that employee communications were getting lost in a sea of other pieces all branded to match TfL’s standard corporate blue.

The team quickly set about refreshing the reward communications, opting for bright and bold images, which would stand out and be noticed. TfL used the same tactic for its new employee engagement hub and simplified the user experience by only showing key messages, which link through to richer content.

Further feedback told the team that employees were only really using discounts to save on groceries and big retailers. And with over 800 other retailers offering a great discount, the team started running new campaigns every three weeks to promote the wider range of offers available on myTfL, highlighting to employees how they could save more of their money.

With the communications, promotions and engagement hub all being rebranded to match the exciting new design, the team looked for new channels to communicate their message. They managed to reach more than 5,500 operational staff, who had previously been hard to engage with, by communicating the different deals staff could benefit from using digital signage and screens in train depots and rest areas.

The results

The sheer range of channels, the scale of the communication work undertaken, and the determination to reach every employee is what made this strategy so creative, compelling, and effective. And it achieved the following results:

• 65% increase in the number of monthly users since the communications were redefined, and a total of 81% unique users over the last 12 months.
• 20% increase in average monthly spend through employee discounts to nearly $2 million, and a 6% increase in employee savings to just over $2 million over the last 12 months.
• 13,650 orders placed on average per month – the highest number ever recorded on myTfL.
• A 200% increase in uptake of Dental Insurance and a significant increase in other voluntary Health Cash plans

TfL’s results show the importance and impact of a uniquely branded communications campaign, which is consistently delivered through channels that employees actively engage with. The employee engagement hub allowed them to be more creative, despite minimal budget, and effectively educate employees on the importance of the wider reward package.