What to Ask from an Employee Benefits Platform and Partner
13 February 2025
What should you be asking a potential employee benefits provider? What should you expect from your employee benefits platform? These are essential questions to ask if you want to implement new workplace benefits or change employee benefits partners. Not all providers are the same, so digging a little deeper than the topline price to explore the gaps is essential. Read on to discover what you should expect from your employee platform.
In our blog, ‘Everything you need to know about employee benefits’, we give an in-depth review of our financial, mental, and physical wellbeing benefits, focusing on how they support employee health and help businesses achieve their goals. Consider this blog as the next step, taking you from understanding the employee benefits available to learning how to get the best from them.
What is an Employee Benefits Platform?
There are many different types of employee benefits available, each supporting a different area of wellbeing. The problem is, if you have various packages from different benefits providers - or just a variety of benefits in isolation, managing and accessing them becomes challenging for users and administrators.
An employee benefits platform centralises all your solutions in one place, making it easier for employees to access and your HR teams to manage.
What an Employee Benefits Platform Can Do for Your Business
It’s no secret that providing employees with benefits that boost their financial, mental and physical wellbeing is good for your business. Employee benefits can help enhance employee engagement, boost morale, increase productivity, reduce employee turnover, reduce absenteeism and more!
So, what difference does an employee benefits platform make?
1. Centralise All Benefits
An employee benefits platform can centralise your workplace perks in one place. With a single sign-on feature, employees will find it easier to access their benefits and will be more likely to use them. Only when employees make good use of their benefits will you see a return on your investment.
2. Reduce Administration
When benefits are spread around, your HR teams must log in to different systems when accessing the admin portals. It’s a time-consuming process. By centralising all benefits in one hub, you can reduce the time needed for benefits administration and streamline internal processes.
3. Data-Driven Insights
With all the benefits in one place, you can get a holistic view of the data that will drive your employee benefits strategy. Understand how your employees use their benefits, what’s making the most significant difference to their lives, and identify benefits where uptake is low.
What an Employee Benefits Platform Can Do for Your Employees
Employee benefits can make a significant difference to employees’ lives, financially, mentally, and physically, so what difference does an employee benefits platform make?
Ease of Access
The most significant difference an Employee Benefits Platform makes for your employees is the ease of access, especially with single sign-on functionality. When you make it easier for your employees to locate the benefits and perks you offer them, they have more opportunities to improve their wellbeing. Whether you provide Employee Discounts, Salary Sacrifice Schemes, an Employee Assistance Programme, or all the above and more, it makes sense to house them in one consolidated platform.
When you make it easier for your employees to enjoy more of what matters most, you nurture a healthier, more loyal and engaged workforce = good news for your productivity and retention rates!
Employee benefits can make so much difference to your employees’ lives, but don’t just take our word for it. We were thrilled recently when an employee of one of our clients who’s soon to retire reached out to us to express their appreciation.
Dear Pluxee,
I have been a user of the Pluxee Discount App (formerly Sodexo) for about seven years, and during that time, you've saved me hundreds and hundreds of pounds. However, I will soon embark on my well-deserved retirement. One thing I will miss is when I have to say goodbye to the app and feel it appropriate to pass on my gratitude to you for the last seven years. So, a big thank you from me. Keep up the good work, and I will continue to promote you to my colleagues for the next couple of months, as I cannot understand why they would not want to save money.
Once again, thank you.
Chris Hawley
How to Get the Most from Your Employee Benefits Platform
Consolidating your perks into one Employee Benefits Platform is the first step towards creating an offering that will produce high levels of engagement. Experience and research prove that simply offering the benefits isn’t enough to guarantee uptake, even when you consolidate them into one hub, so follow our six tips for getting the most from your employee benefits platform.
1. Meet Employee Needs
Before shopping for an employee benefits partner, ensure you know what solutions and support your employees need. Anonymous internal surveys help define where your employees may need the most help and what benefits interest them. It’s vital to meet employee needs if you want to increase employee engagement, boost morale or reduce employee turnover.
2. Contract with a Partner Over a Provider
We’ve interchanged ‘benefits provider’ and ‘employee benefits partner’ throughout this blog, but we don’t consider them the same. Employee benefits providers do just that: provide you with a range of perks. Employee benefits partners work with you to make your offering successful, helping you achieve your people and business goals.
At Pluxee UK, we do this by understanding your needs from day one and working with you every step of the way.
3. Host a Launch Event
Benefits launch events drum up the initial excitement within your workforce. Make a party of it, get everyone together, explain what employee benefits you’re offering and how to access them. It’s vital to use launch events to drive home the difference wellbeing benefits can make to your employees’ lives, encouraging them to log in and register on the day.
4. Create Super Users
As we've seen in Chris' message above, employee benefits super users can be your biggest benefits advocates. Using the power of peer-to-peer promotion, they give their colleagues a real-life example of how much money they can save. Peer recommendations can be more powerful than leadership promotion. Creating super users and benefits champions will vastly improve uptake and engagement.
5. Communicate
Continuous communication is an essential part of the process. Keep the momentum and enthusiasm you created during your launch event going by regularly promoting employee benefits and perks to your employees.
6. Review
Things change, and even though a comprehensive benefits package will reduce employee turnover, there will naturally be people changes over the years. Even the needs of employees with a long service will evolve as they transition through the different stages of their lives. Regularly survey employees to ensure your benefits strategy remains impactful and relevant.
What to Expect with Pluxee UK as Your Employee Benefits Partner
At Pluxee UK, you get a partner. We’re by your side throughout your employee lifecycle, helping your employees get the most from life. Here’s a taste of what to expect...
An Easy-to-Access User-Friendly Platform
Our Employee Benefits Platform is easily accessible via desktop and an app that's compatible with iOS and Android. The platform is home to discounts with hundreds of retailers, holiday savings, and the over 400 online cashback deals that form part of that package. It's also the hub for accessing all other benefits and perks.
We designed our Employee Discounts App to help employees quickly find the instant savings they need when they’re out and about - allowing your people to make the most of in-the-moment discounts.
Usability
We want your employees to use their benefits because that’s when they and you see the difference they can make. Our Discounts App gives your employees speedy search functionality and biometric login with Face ID or Fingerprint - they can choose their preferred method. Our one-click, single sign-on functionality allows for a more seamless experience, enhanced security features ensure payments are safe, and our ‘Scroll, Shop, and Save’ feature makes for a more seamless user experience.
UK-Based Customer Support
Your HR and benefits administration teams don’t need to worry about fielding queries. Our UK-based customer care team is fully trained to handle questions about all the employee benefits we offer.
Free Bolt-Ons
Who doesn’t love a freebie? Especially when they’re free to implement and can save you money. When you take on our Employee Discounts Platform, we’ll bolt on our Cycle to Work and Green Car Salary Sacrifice Schemes for free. We can also bolt on our salary deduction schemes, SmartPay and Refurbished Tech.
Integrate External Employee Benefits
We understand that our clients may have a benefit their people love or a contract yet to expire… it’s not a problem. You can even integrate employee benefits from other providers into our platform to ensure your employees remain happy and satisfied.
Branded Solution
Brand your Employee Benefits Platform to keep it unique to you! By ensuring it’s your brand and name that your people see when they save money, book a discounted holiday, reduce their gym membership, or seek mental health support, it’s you that they feel grateful towards. Personalising your platform helps employees feel connected to your business, increasing their sense of loyalty.
Account Management
As part of our partnership, we offer you an experienced account manager to ensure your scheme runs smoothly. They help you troubleshoot any issues that may arise and offer ideas to keep engagement high to deliver a return on your investment.
Transparent Reporting
Your account manager will provide regular reports detailing how your employees engage with your platform and use their employee benefits. These regular reviews help you understand the impact you’re making and where uptake may need improvement.
Engagement and Marketing Support
Alongside the support you’ll receive from your account manager, our in-house consumer marketing team will regularly share materials and insights via email and our Communications Hub - which allows you to personalise the content we create.
In addition to providing you with promotional materials, we run regular competitions across our range of solutions, driving engagement and giving your employees the chance to win prizes.
Security and Compliance
We take the security of our products and services very seriously and continue to achieve the ISO 27001:2022 standard, which is internationally recognised. We’ve also held the internationally recognised BSI to the ISO9001:2015 standard since 2016. In 2021, we gained Cyber Essential and Cyber Essentials Plus certification to further our commitment to the security of our products and services.
What's next?
Now that you know what to ask for from an employee benefits platform and the value of choosing a partner over a provider, join us in bringing your employees more of what matters most and making work a place to belong.
