How do you boost engagement with employee benefits?

Before we start, it’s essential to note that not all employee benefits are the same, so there’s no one-fits-all approach to enhancing benefits engagement and uptake. An Employee Assistance Programme (EAP) is an employee benefit that enhances mental wellbeing, and the most effective engagement methods involve removing the stigma and building the culture. Your workforce demographics also play a part, so it’s beneficial to take the time to understand how to boost employee engagement within your business.

What is financial wellbeing?

At Pluxee UK, we provide businesses with a wide range of employee benefits to boost financial, physical, and mental wellbeing while resolving a host of HR headaches. We pride ourselves on creating a culture that our people want to be a part of and on being a conscious employer with a strong environmental focus. We also offer our people all of the employee benefits that we provide to other businesses.

Giving employees more reasons to smile = a world of opportunities for your business!

Our employees’ financial wellbeing is important, but what is financial wellbeing?

Like financial resilience, financial wellbeing is more than having enough money to get by. It’s rooted in education, awareness, and creating the habits that stretch money further, alleviating money worries and stress.

We’ve given our employees access to a host of employee benefits that will enhance their financial wellbeing, but just like your people, they need the occasional engagement boost. 

Taking steps to boost employee engagement and financial wellbeing

For our challenge, we focused on two of our salary-stretching employee benefits - our Virtual Pluxee Card and Employee Discounts Platform. 

• Our Pluxee Card is a prepaid card powered by Visa, to which employers and employees can add funds. We partner with over 80 retailers and offer up to 15% cashback for using our Pluxee Card at the checkout - online and in-store. 
• Our Employee Discounts Platform gives employees access to discounted eVouchers, reducing the cost of their up-front purchase with over 150 participating retailers.

Both solutions require some preparation, such as checking which retailers you can earn or save with, topping up your card, or buying a voucher before reaching the checkout. These small steps make a significant difference, and even the most aware people need encouragement to change the way they spend.

So, here’s how we boosted engagement, expanded our colleagues’ knowledge, and encouraged our people to take control of their financial wellbeing.

Our Pluxeers know what employee benefits are available to them, but we wanted to ensure they really understood the perks of using them regularly =  the creation of our 21-Day Money Marathon!

Why 21 days?

Changing a habit is said to take 21 days, and people are often creatures of habit. We also crave convenience and have become used to a ‘one-click’ culture.

We desire a fast and easy transaction process with as few steps as possible. Buying an eVoucher or adding funds to your Pluxee Card is an extra step, and when making small purchases, many employees - ours and yours - need reminding that small savings add up and that extra step, thought, and planning is worth it. 

Our mission over the 21 days of the challenge was to help our colleagues understand the value so they would finish with a new mindset - one where they made their money stretch further at every available opportunity.

How did we encourage them to sign up?

Prizes!

We quickly discovered that we have some competitive people, but prizes remain an effective way to get people to sign up for a competition. With the top prize of £100 up for grabs, either issued as an eVoucher or loaded onto their Pluxee Card balance, 30 of our Pluxeers signed up and committed to using their Employee Discounts and cashback-earning Pluxee Card for as many of their regular and special purchases as they could for 21 days.

The winner would be the person with the highest combined savings and cashback earnings.

How did we keep employees highly engaged throughout the challenge?

We created this challenge because we understand the need to encourage people to change their habits, so our 21-Day Money Marathon Squad was with them every step of the way.

Our challenge began on payday, so our participants were coming into a new month with a ‘clean slate’ before they started their monthly spending. Kicking it off with a challenge pack, we encouraged them to think about their month and what they would need to buy.

We encouraged them to consider:

• Were there any birthdays coming up?
• Any meals with friends?
• Could they start planning summer trips ahead of time?

By prompting participants to think ahead, we were helping them avoid convenient but potentially more expensive last-minute next-day purchases.

Keeping the momentum going and employee engagement high.

Every morning, our challenge Squad posted a prompt to the dedicated Teams chat, such as, ‘Are you planning a spot of gardening?’ or ‘Are you heading out at the weekend?’

Each prompt would then suggest some retailers on our Employee Discounts and Pluxee Card schemes that they could shop with.

Then, in the afternoon, they asked the group a question that required them to check either their platform or app to find the answer, with the first correct answer winning an extra £1 added to their challenge total.

They loved it, but how did we enhance their knowledge?

Our challenge Squad posed questions that made our participants think about retailers they may not typically shop with, but one of the best parts of the group chat was the organic knowledge sharing. A participant would express that they’d learnt something new, someone else would post about a similar retailer, and then another, and before we knew it, our participants were advising each other of where they could shop, save, and earn!

And the results?

Our 21-Day Money Marathon Squad was thrilled with the results!

The engagement was mixed, with 11 of the 30 participants regularly engaging with the challenge prompts and providing feedback on completion. However, those who engaged did so with passion. The colleague engagement and sharing of tips wasn't something the Squad could plan for, but with their daily encouragement, it took off naturally and made the challenge what it was for many people.

An employee engagement boost!

22 of the 30 participants used their Employee Discounts and Pluxee Card to varying extents during the 21 days, saving and earning a combined total of £658.67.

Let’s put this into context…

That’s £219.55 per week of the challenge and an average of nearly £10 per person.

£10 per week is a small amount in isolation, but let’s not forget the point of the challenge - to make our Pluxeers see how small savings can add up!

£10 per week x 52 weeks of the year = £520.

The 21 days were just a snapshot of a moment in their lives. Consider those who are taking on a DIY project, paying for the school uniform, or spending extra at Christmas… These are times when employees will buy more than they usually would -than they did during those 21 days.

Using the discounts and cashback schemes wherever possible throughout the year could save a significant amount. Your employees have the power to stretch their salaries. You just need to ensure they can see the value. 

Did we achieve our goals?

Here’s a reminder of what our goals were:

1. Enhancing education and awareness.
2. Creating better habits and nurturing a team of savvy savers.
3. Encouraging brand ambassadorship on LinkedIn.

Feedback is essential for any new initiative, and the 11 Pluxeers who volunteered their thoughts with us provided invaluable information.

Here’s what we asked them…

Did you learn anything new?

Yes! I spent more time looking into some of the brands I wasn't as familiar with and found some more that I can shop with in the future and save money in the process.

I started using and checking our Discounts Platform much more than I used to. I am actively using my Pluxee Card, but not our discounts platform because the idea of buying individual vouchers seemed hard for me. However, during this campaign, I managed to buy a voucher right there at the till and used it without any issue! That was a nice and eye-opening surprise for me.

I discovered I could save my discounted voucher in my Apple wallet and see the remaining balance.

Has this challenge changed your buying/budgeting behaviour for the better?

It reconfirms that if you change your behaviours around managing and utilising the schemes your employer provides you with, you can change your habits and make great savings.

Yes! It has reminded me to take advantage of our amazing savings. We offer such a vast range and easily forget what is available. Saving that odd £1 here and there may not seem worth it at the time, but it makes such a big difference with overall spending, and if we have it available, why not take advantage? It all adds up! So yes, my mindset has changed to not only take advantage of the bigger savings but to think more about the smaller/more frequent savings, too!

It made me think about saving on  some of my smaller purchases that I might not have bothered about previously.

You can agree that this snapshot of our feedback shows that we achieved our goals, raising awareness and changing habits that enhance employee financial wellbeing.

In addition to giving our participants the chance to win the daily quiz, we also wanted to encourage them to step out of their comfort zone on social media, gifting additional points to those who posted about their savings and cashback wins on social media.

With guidance from our Squad, some of the participants posted for the first time ever on LinkedIn, which was great for their personal brand and Pluxee awareness. Another goal achieved!

Finally, we had to know what our colleagues loved most about the challenge, and here’s what they said…

This is tough as I enjoyed so many different parts of it. I love how it encouraged people to come out of their comfort zones and post about it on LinkedIn. I, for one, am not a big LinkedIn poster, so this was something I enjoyed doing. I also enjoyed the daily quizzes and the competitiveness that came with them. It also allowed us all to take a short breather and have some fun.

I loved the daily interaction. I felt like it really brought us together.

The community feel - listening to others' stories and telling your own and just the excitement around it. It gave the perfect balance of financial support and the fun perks aspect of our employee benefits.

My favourite thing was how the communication team utilised the Teams channel to actively engage with us. Even though the quizzes seemed to be the most popular activity, I really enjoyed the daily reminders of our various retailers on both platforms. Each message made me go into the platform to review the merchant and their offerings. If it weren't for these messages, I would never go and browse on my own and learn that we have discounted vouchers for pubs and also a third-wave coffee shops! I really loved that. I wish it didn't need to stop.

We’re Pluxee UK, and we pride ourselves on being a trusted partner, practising what we preach, leading the way with employee engagement initiatives, and enhancing the wellbeing of our people and yours.

Request a call to discover more about our employee benefits and how they can enhance financial wellbeing and boost engagement.