The UK’s largest water company, Thames Water, has consolidated its voluntary benefits, salary sacrifice and reward and recognition services into a single service in a move designed to increase employee engagement.
The new service, branded “Benefits on Tap”, will provide Thames Water employees with access to exclusive shopping discounts, Cashback on online shopping, childcare vouchers, cycle to work and a new long service award system. All of these benefits will be provided on a single platform from provider Asperity Employee Benefits. The single platform is designed to make employee benefits simple to use and easily accessible and is supported by a 7 day per week employee helpdesk.
A range of employee communications material will be used to engage employees with the scheme, including traditional printed leaflets and posters, employee roadshows and various digital media including screencasts and videos.
Sarah Hunt, Head of Reward, Policy and ER at Thames Water, said: “We wanted to have a genuine one-stop-shop for all of our employee benefits with a single website, single telephone helpdesk and single communications plan. After a thorough procurement exercise we chose Asperity as the provider to deliver that.”
The service will launch with over 1,500 employee discount offers and a fully integrated discount voucher and reloadable card facility allowing discounts of up to 10% in-store at key retailers such as Debenhams, House of Fraser and Comet.
Special features of the Benefits On Tap scheme include a Google Maps service to search for local in-store offers and a Savings Centre where employees can track their savings and even forecast future savings through the site. The site will also use Asperity’s RewardFocus 2.0 technology, which allows each employee to fully customise their benefits homepage. Email communications will be tailored to each individual employee’s personal preferences.
“We hope the use of this innovative technology in our benefits package will significantly boost take-up by ensuring that communications are highly relevant to each individual. We want each employee to feel like their benefits package is made especially for them,” added Hunt.
Asperity’s MD, Glenn Elliott, added: “We’re delighted to be providing Thames Water’s brand new employee benefits scheme. A streamlined, integrated scheme will always be more popular with employees than one with separate benefits components with various registration details, support provisions and so on. Benefits On Tap is a shining example of the integrated approach and we expect to see some great results in terms of engagement with the scheme.”
