Award-winning pub chain JD Wetherspoon has launched a brand new employee discounts scheme and achieved record take-up in just a few days.
One thousand people registered on the first day alone, with another thousand registering on day two. After being live for less than a week, the engagement figure continues to rise at record speed.
JD Wetherspoon has provided all 26,000 of their employees with access to shopping discounts at over 2000 retailers online and in-store, on Asperity's newly revamped Reward Gateway platform. The latest version showcases a whole list of new features, including ProductFinder™, InsureCompare™ and FastCashback™, all of which are designed to improve usability and increase engagement.
Working to overcome the challenge of engaging a 90% offline workforce, JD Wetherspoon initiated a multi-faceted promotional plan in order to maximise their communications channels. Information on the myDiscounts programme featured in Tatler, the pub's weekly employee newsletter, as well as the weekly email to pub management, the monthly head office meeting, and myJDW, their employee intranet. Details were included in every pub based employee’s payslip and a letter to all staff from the company's Chief Exec was uploaded on to the intranet.
Teaser communications started to go out a month prior to launch in order to create a buzz about the new programme, which, tied in with a competition to win an iPad elicited an enthusiastic response from staff.
"Engaging staff across over 800 different pubs in the UK was no easy task, particularly when only a very small percentage have access to computers during the working day," said George Farrow, Client Services Director at Asperity. "Yet, it's clear that the communications plan was an immense success, with the figure standing at 3,700 registered members a week after the 1st August launch."
JD Wetherspoon's Senior Personnel Manager, Julie George, added: "We're really pleased with the initial results. One of the reasons we chose Asperity was because of the wide variety of places our employees would be able to obtain discount, plus the site is very easy to use.
"We've really enjoyed working closely with JD Wetherspoon on such a thorough communications plan" added George Farrow. "We're proud to have supported them in their strategy to reach out to their offline workforce and we applaud the team at JD Wetherspoon for working hard to make sure their employees were aware of the benefit".
