What is it? An on-line used car buying site for employees,
which, typically, is accessed via a company’s Intranet. It attempts to address
the imbalance between those who do and don’t get a company car and increase the
scope for voluntary benefits.
Rating The site works well and the design is clean.
eDefined has done a fair amount of usability testing and it does a good job of
building up a relationship with the customer. It also addresses their needs
immediately, letting a user choose which car they want at which price. We did
note there weren’t as many cars available as we thought there might be and
would get a fed up of repeated "cannot match your search criteria"
messages coming up. eDefined acknowledges this on the site and you can request
a car and it will go off and search for it.
What is it? A concierge system for time-starved
employees to readdress their work-life balance. It acts as a middleman between
the employee and the service they require, which ranges from booking theatre
tickets to keyholding. Cost is £55 per month per employee.
Rating It’s impossible to glean from the site how
well Enviego works since it is merely an interface to a range of services it
offers (prospective clients are able to trial the system properly). It’s a
minimally designed interface which takes the user quickly through to the range
of services available. After choosing the service you want a list is given of
options to book. These aren’t as comprehensive in some sections as we expected
– one trainer was listed in Health and Beauty and a single dog walker under
pets. What remains to be seen is how it will cope with demand when the service
takes off. Service providers are linked to the Enviego system which
automatically notifies them of a job request. Enviego collates and compares the
quotes submitted and then forwards them to the users for approval. We didn’t
actually book a service but given that the suppliers are all linked to the
system, it should work well.
What is it? An on-line reward and incentive shop,
selling everything from flowers and chocolates to gift vouchers and trips to a
health farm. It can accessed on the Internet by individuals or account holders
or can be branded on an intranet.
Rating Very jolly. The animated type is fun the first
time but after a while became annoying but it’s quick to download. The home
page makes it clear that there are a good range of incentives on offer and the
National Insurance and tax information is clearly written and easily accessed
from the outset. A few things irritated us along the route of choosing a gift,
such as having to scroll down to get to a proceed button but placing an order
takes a matter of minutes. Our only beef was that we ordered £97,000 worth of
chocolates and then didn’t seem to be able to cancel this once we selected it
but this could be because we were using a dummy account.
What is it? A dedicated pensions administration site,
which can be accessed by both HR and the employee. It takes daily digital feeds
from each of the pension providers it deals with and is able to calculate the
value of a fund at any time, day or night. We accessed a working model within
the Smith & Williamson site. the overall cost is calculated to be within
the stakeholder cap of one per cent and Swipe, which developed the site will
charge a fee of £1,000 to install its software.
Rating Although the design lacked some of the
sophistication of Eurobenefits.com, we preferred the simpler approach. It does
exactly what it claims to and is extremely easy to use for an employee. You can
cut straight to your own personal details via a home page login and within
minutes we were tinkering with the contributions in our dummy fund via the
“What-if” option. We upped our monthly contribution by £50 and within 30 seconds
a What-If fund analysis box appeared on screen next to our original one, so it
was easy to compare the two. There is also a handy glossary of pension terms,
written in plain English.
What is it? Web Award Redemption Programme (Warp) is a
global on-line reward scheme. Employees can log on to a tailored area on the
site to select and choose an award. We were able to access Nortel’s section of
the site to see it in action. Price on application.
Rating Nortel’s site shows how flexible Warp is and
it was well tailored to the needs of this particular client. The overall look
and feel is impressive but it is a bit over-designed in places – areas of the
site took a while to download which is frustrating. It aspires to giving the
employee an enjoyable shopping experience and succeeds in doing so – you
certainly feel like you’re being rewarded. However, you need to make sure all
employees have been given lessons in navigation or they may otherwise stumble
around the site. If you have offices around the world and want to streamline
your reward programme, this is certainly worth looking at and the very
implementation of a system such as this would show employees that you are very
committed to rewarding them.
What is it? It claims to be the first digital
flexible benefits system. Designed for employees and HR departments to view and
manage their benefits package at any time. It’s Internet-based but users can be
routed through a company intranet. We were shown a working model of the site.
The cost is £100 per employee per year. Start-up price is on application.
Rating The intention behind it is ambitious but it
offers a high degree of functionality and is a heavyweight system. It is well
designed and easy to find your way around. Employees log on and are taken to
their section of the site, which has a personalised MyBenefits interface. Again
this is well designed and the copywriting on the site is good, explaining
things in easy language. Throughout the site does a good job of building a
relationship with the individual. We saw working demos of its interactivity,
such as being able to alter your pension contribution by simply keying the new
amount in a box and clicking. Overall, the site is impressive and evidently a
lot of thought has gone into its usability but then again, you’d expect this in
a site of this stature.
Sign up to our weekly round-up of HR news and guidance
Receive the Personnel Today Direct e-newsletter every Wednesday
Unfortunately, we were unable to gain access to the Motivano
system because of client confidentiality but, as one of the market leaders,
feel it should be included. Motivano takes a holistic approach to benefits and
rewards and offers clients a complete range of on-line and offline tools to
help implement a benefits system. It has negotiated a number of deals with
benefit providers and also offers discounts on a range of perks from cinema
tickets to holidays. We like the fact that the system can be managed via a
fully branded intranet. It claims to have signed up 250 clients in the past
seven months and that it can install a system in a matter of days.
