Amy Turner
2 min read
I spent most of my childhood being taught not to take sweets from strangers. I remember vividly sitting in class as the teacher hammered the point home; if someone we’d never met tried to give us something for free we shouldn’t take it. Wise words for school children.
Yet I often wonder if we carry some of that cynicism into our adult life. We refuse to believe that we can get something for nothing, so when we actually do, it’s a very welcome surprise.
It’s a barrier we occasionally face when promoting our employee discount programs to staff. Trying to give someone the chance to save 5% on all of their grocery shopping is sometimes harder than it should be, ‘what’s the catch?” people ask.
The answer is simple, “There is no catch, your employer wants to reward you for all of your hard work.” Most people at this point smile, nod and graciously accept, but there is always the minority that need more convincing.
That’s why it's so important to ensure that you are delivering the right kind of message in your employee benefits communications and where freebies can actually be really helpful. Everybody loves a freebie.
Sweets are a really simple solution - everybody loves the instant gratification of something edible and the best thing is they don’t have to be expensive, you can pick up 100 mini bags of Haribo for less than a tenner.
Sweets are great for desk drops, launches, goody bags or roadshows and you can make them into a talking point just by adding a simple sticker to each pack.
We have seen it work wonders for our clients before. Sending out a letter to all your people is an effective way to engage employees, but sending out a letter with a KitKat attached is even more impactful, it becomes something that people remember and something that they discuss with their colleagues.
We are always looking for and creating new ways to get employees talking about their employee benefits in their package and I am pretty confident that sweets are up there as one of the easiest and most effective techniques. It’s a really positive way to get the conversation about your employee benefits started and in my experience, people are rarely shy when there are free sweets up for grabs!