Laura Bury
How Wescot transformed its communications and reward strategy to achieve 98% engagement
Engaging and connecting employees in call centers is a familiar challenge for many businesses, and can be especially difficult without centralized communications. Wescot, one of the UK’s leading debt recovery agencies, was looking to address this challenge.
Wescot employs a wide-ranging workforce of 2,000 employees across three separate business units, the majority of which are based within its call center function. Its HR team needed a central hub from which they could manage employee discounts and employee communications, and connect every colleague across the company.
Wescot reached out to Reward Gateway to bring its separate benefits and employee discounts programs under one roof, while also driving stronger engagement across its entire workforce. With historic challenges in connecting to its broad employee base, Wescot was looking to deliver a seamless user experience that all colleagues could buy into.
When laying out an initial plan for the platform, Wescot underlined two important characteristics – simplicity and engagement. Employee rewards and discounts were deemed a priority, so Reward Gateway handpicked a range of retailers to match Wescot’s broad demographic.
When it came to branding the platform, the team settled on the name ‘E.R.I.C.’ – short for Engage, Reward, Include and Communicate – to help show the range of benefits the platform would bring and create an inclusive feel for all employees. As a central hub, it has now naturally become an ideal place to run campaigns, host surveys, share engaging content and gather feedback from colleagues.
Transforming communications throughout the pandemic and beyond
Having launched E.R.I.C. just a matter of months before the start of the pandemic, Wescot soon found itself looking further beyond discounts to see how the platform could benefit its employee communications in response to COVID-19.
Sarah Warneck, Communications Officer at Wescot says:
The progress we’ve made as an organization simply by having the Reward Gateway platform in place has been incredible. It’s been an essential part of our new strategy around internal communications and brand values. We’ve had such great feedback on our surveys and all-hands meetings that we’re planning to deliver even more campaigns and integrations through the platform later this year!
Since the E.R.I.C. platform launched in December 2019, Wescot has seen a remarkable improvement in engagement among its workforce, 98% of which are now active users on the platform. This is a fantastic achievement considering the difficulties the company has traditionally faced within a heavily regulated financial services industry.
In just over a year employees have spent more than $540k through the SmartSpending app so far, saving a grand total of about $41k in the process. As for employee recognition, just under 4,500 eCards have been sent between colleagues across the organization.
Interested in learning more about how to transform your communications strategy to drive engagement? Get in touch with us, and we’ll show you how our solutions can support your business goals.
