Industry:
Retail
Number of employees:
5,500
Number of locations:
34
Platform features:
Employee benefits, employee wellbeing
The challenge
Welcome Break is a high-growth motorway service operator with 34 different locations, representing hundreds of brands and a largely offline workforce. The business recently became a fully franchised business, where the team members work for the parent organisation Welcome Break, but represent and wear the uniforms of a variety of brands such as KFC, Subway, Starbucks, Ramada, etc, creating candidate competition between Welcome Break and High Street larger brands.
Following the EU referendum and Brexit, many new starters were leaving Welcome Break to return to their home country, which greatly reduced the applicant pool and the possibility of new starters staying with the company for long-term careers. Welcome Break had to find a way to retain employees, while creating a range of benefits to attract the 18+ demographic, while reducing spend on recruitment agencies and a goal of reducing labour turnover by 10%.
Complicating this was also an issue of inaccessible public transport to the various locations, which were located in remote areas, and a need to stretch their employees’ disposable income without the expense of a big pay rise.
The approach
To create trust and to communicate what staff could expect from Welcome Break as an employer, the team made a handbook containing important information and promises to employees.
Alongside this, the organisation made an effort to reinvent its Attraction and Retention plan. Welcome Break conducted focus groups called “Fishbowl” meetings and surveyed 300 employees to see what attracted them to the organisation, and what would make them stay, focussing on benefits and the employee experience. In response, Welcome Break created pillars of engagement to achieve its objectives:
- Social - To encourage Teams to have strong relationships at work and home
- Financial - To help effectively manage their finances
- Health - To improve Teams’ health physically and mentally
- Community - Encourage them to have a sense of engagement to Welcome Break and its charity
- Career - To show how they can achieve careers in a specialist or Leadership Role
- Safety - To feel respected and safe at work
There was also a lack of understanding and awareness of current offerings that needed to be addressed.
Working with Reward Gateway, Welcome Break rebranded its engagement hub, My Welcome Break, to simplify the logo and content to show that the site was about capturing hearts and minds of their people through helping them make their pay go further and providing extra benefits to make life easier.
These included:
- Adding Neyber to the platform to offer financial advice and loans
- New benefits on discounted car leasing
- An Employee Assistance program
- Moving to a proactive medical supplier to encourage wellness
- More focus on health and fitness groups, with posts on mental health and exercise through the Wellbeing Centre
- Bringing more attention to the existing employee discounts program where users could make their pay go further with access to in-store and online savings at hundreds of retailers
Welcome Break also developed a First Level Leadership development program, to prepare for a leadership career with the organisation, bringing in more opportunity for entry-level workers to move up to a specialist or management position.