Ladbrokes have launched a Childcare Voucher service to all 18,000 UK Staff across head office and retail divisions.
The new scheme allows staff to take part of their salary as a payment direct to a registered Childcare – saving up to £980 per year for basic rate tax payers and £1195 per year for higher rate tax payers.
The services uses benefits technology from Asperity Employee Benefits that allows employees to choose between a fully online service, fully offline service or hybrid service.
HR Director for Reward Sara Davies said “When choosing a provider it was really important to make sure we would get a system that all of our staff could use as most of them are not online during the working day. The programme we have offers full online access and online vouchers for those who want them, or an offline service for employees who prefer to engage over the telephone. The result should be maximum engagement which is really important as this could add a significant amount of money to the take home pay of our workforce.”
The scheme is also one of the first to use Asperity’s new SMS text marketing platform that allows employees to respond to posters, flyers and other communications by text message. Sara Davies added “In a retail environment it’s hard for staff to get the time to respond to employee comms and marketing – if you’ve a queue of customers to serve they are your priority. Allowing staff to request more information or a call back by text message is a great way to engage with people and uses nothing more than the mobile phone that we all have in our pocket”.
Glenn Elliott, Asperity’s MD said “Many providers miss the point about the online / offline debate and think if you’re not online you must want paper Childcare Vouchers sent by post. Some users do want this but many more just want to talk through the options on the phone, signup by phone and then have the money paid direct to their carer. This new programme for Ladbrokes is the first hybrid Childcare Voucher scheme in the UK where users can join offline but still have payments made to carers electronically. Combined with allowing employees to respond to marketing by text message we’re expecting much higher levels of engagement than other schemes.”
