Food production company hones in on wellbeing strategy 

Pilgrim's Pride had grown substantially over the last decade through numerous mergers, acquisitions and organic growth, including an acquisition of Tulip. Since launching wellbeing initiatives, there has been a 20% increase in memberships to Westfield Healthcare, a 26% increase in Childcare Voucher memberships, and 280 employees signed up to Cycle to Work.

The challenge:

Pilgrim's Pride has grown substantially over the last decade through numerous mergers, acquisitions and organic growth. This focus concentrated on building the business sometimes missed on how their employees could grow. Pilgrim's Pride most recently appointed CEO supported the idea that their people are their greatest asset and gave the HR team full support in implementing initiatives across the business that would help make Pilgrim's Pride a great place to work.

Although Pilgrim's Pride had an active wellbeing offering, there wasn’t a joined up plan that would help develop a robust strategy and the necessary framework to benefit everyone. Especially to reach the 5,000 employees who work within manufacturing and do not have online access at the workplace. The key challenge for Pilgrim's Pride was how they could do this in a simple, engaging way, and in a format that everyone would be able to access and understand.

The approach:

Given the diversity of cultural and educational backgrounds of their workforce, Pilgrim's Pride's driving principle was that their strategy had to be shaped around a true understanding of what health and wellbeing actually means. Especially as a benefit utilised for all of their employees.

Pilgrim's Pride decided that for their wellbeing strategy to work, it needed to focus on a wider range of subjects other than preventing absence through illness. For them, health and wellbeing is a state of complete mental, physical and social wellbeing, and their aptly named Equipped for Life! initiative would be launched to match this. Going beyond providing help and advice in the workplace, Equipped for Life! would also extend to offer support outside of the working environment.

The initiative was based on the tried and tested methods that covered best practice in the needs of both business and employees. It includes health, education, personal development and the benefits which could be extended to employee’s families and the local communities Pilgrim's Pride operates in.

The results:

Equipped for Life! was implemented during 2014 and utilised all of the tools available on the Reward Gateway platform, 'our table' (formerly My Tulip Rewards). It was supported by a range of on-site activities, a specially created brochure and being easily accessible to all employees whether they use a smartphone, laptop, tablet, or desktop computer. Specific areas of health and wellbeing are covered in the initiative, such as smoking cessation, weight loss, health education, Cycle to Work, discounted gym memberships, money advice and community volunteering.

12 months after the launch of the platform with Equipped for Life!, they were already seeing their wellbeing strategy align with their goal to be recognised as a great place to work. There has been a 20% increase in memberships to Westfield Healthcare, a 26% increase in Childcare Voucher memberships, and 280 employees have signed up to Cycle to Work. Increased health and wellbeing awareness has also led to Pilgrim's Pride being recognised by their customers, playing a key part in developing long term partnerships.