Industry:
Communications
Number of employees:
5,000
RG launch date:
November 2012
Platform features:
Employee discounts
The challenge
Discovery’s challenge is to support the business’s ability to attract, motivate and retain top creative talent within the competitive media industry. This is particularly difficult with a young workforce (majority Generation X and Millennials).
The company’s objective over the last few years has been to get into the Fortune 100 Best Companies to Work For.
Discovery’s careers pages highlight this commitment of “aiming to attract, development and motivate the best people in every corner of our company so that we can ignite curiosity in audiences in every corner of the globe.”
"With 10 different locations in the U.S., Reward Gateway helped Discovery develop a thorough and wide-reaching communication strategy."
The approach
Discovery knew that the solution to motivating and retaining top talent lay in creating a strong employee culture. As part of its commitment to shaping a healthy and balanced workforce, the team chose Reward Gateway to provide an integrated engagement and wellness hub for its 4,000 U.S. staff.
In the UK, the company’s previous voluntary discount service had limited take-up and the perks team had received negative employee feedback regarding the program. Reward Gateway was appointed to launch a new, higher-quality discounts hub in the UK in November 2012. Within a year, the initiative was performing excellently, with 72% of employees registered. The decision was taken to leverage the success of the UK offering and introduce the hub in the U.S. to support Discovery’s global reward focus.
"The addition of Reward Gateway's engagement portal has strengthened our position as an employer of choice."
With 10 different locations in the U.S., Reward Gateway helped Discovery develop a thorough and wide-reaching communication strategy using posters and emails in pre-launch and launch communications. A workplace social media tool was also used to create buzz and capture the attention of Discovery’s young workforce. A teaser campaign was put in place two weeks before launch to raise excitement and get maximum visibility.
The results
The combination of different creative techniques to increase engagement amongst its 4,000 U.S. based employees has succeeded in getting the attention of its workforce, with 50% engagement within the first six months.
As Karen Kinzett-Evans, Director of International Compensation and Benefits at Discovery Communications states, “we believe that the addition of Reward Gateway’s engagement portal to our comprehensive benefit package has strengthened both our employee’s perception of their benefits and our position as an employer of choice in the media industry.”
The company succeeded in its goal and was named as one of only two media companies in the 2014 Fortune Top 100 Best Companies to Work For.
