How Babcock International Group reinvented its benefits strategy with a centralised, consistent employee experience for 53% take-up in hard-to-reach workforce

Babcock International Group is a leading provider of critical, complex engineering services which support national defence, save lives and protect communities. It focusses on three highly regulated markets – defence, emergency services and civil nuclear – delivering vital services and managing complex assets in the UK and internationally.

Its HR department needed to deliver a seamless benefits and discounts platform that would engage every member of its multi-generational workforce.

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10k+

employees using the platform

What they needed

Rolling out a first-class employee benefits and discounts programme within a multinational organisation is no mean feat. Broad workplace demographics, siloed departments and alignment on communications are all hurdles that must be cleared if the project is to stand any chance of success. 

That’s exactly the challenge the team at Babcock International Group was facing when they first got in touch with Reward Gateway, one made all the more difficult given that a large portion of its workforce doesn’t use a computer as part of their day-to-day role. 

Babcock’s HR team had a basic employee discounts system in place for a few years, though they were struggling to communicate initiatives and get buy-in from employees. After digging a little deeper into what was going wrong, they kept hearing complaints about the user experience and inefficiencies within the actual system – and that was seriously damaging their employer brand.

Babcock was looking to partner with an EVP specialist that could both deliver an engaging digital experience for their employees, provide ongoing support for their HR team and create a fantastic internal brand for its benefits and discounts offering. 

“Our previous benefits platform offered practically nothing in terms of communications, customisation, data analytics or reporting. In fact, the user experience was so clunky that we didn’t even feel comfortable shouting about the initiatives we had in place. That’s when we knew something had to change.”
Donna Nind, Reward Director, Babcock International Group

 

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Industry:

Engineering

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Number of employees:

22,500

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Number of locations:

Multiple

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Platform features:

Employee Benefits, Employee Discounts, Employee Wellbeing, Childcare Vouchers

 

How we helped

Working closely with the Babcock team, Reward Gateway immediately set about developing a strong internal brand for its benefits and discounts portal that would appeal to the entire workforce, regardless of age, location or job role. The target was maximum engagement and uptake, and a strong visual identity and creative communications strategy would be vital to achieve that.

“Chloe, our RG account manager, was instrumental in helping us develop our ‘Big Benefits’ brand and implementation plan,” says Donna. “We focussed on engaging with as many employees as possible across each of our channels. RG’s tailored service has been a huge benefit.”

babcock-01As for the platform itself, Babcock needed a comprehensive range of benefits and discounts to match its broad workforce demographic, all housed on a platform that’s easy to use and engage with no matter what level of IT literacy the user has.

“The actual process of applying for benefits and receiving discounts needed to be seamless,” Donna explains. “We didn’t want long waiting times or unnecessary complications; it needed to be a straightforward process that anybody could follow in just a few clicks.

“One of the great things about the Reward Gateway platform is that it gives us the ability to keep things consistent across our organisation but with the option to customise certain elements to suit employee needs in different sectors and business units. So, whilst the core messaging and benefits services we offer remains the same for most departments, we can really start to tailor our offering to individual business units to ensure maximum engagement with our benefits and discounts.”

This just scratches the surface in terms of the employee benefits and discounts options that Babcock now offers. Employees also have access to discounts from more than 850 retailers, holiday trading options, childcare vouchers, EAP and a healthcare cash plan  – there’s really something to suit everyone. 

The results

Having launched the platform back in February 2020, Babcock currently has a 53% takeup among their workforce – and that figure is continuing to climb every month. This indicates that well over 10,000 employees are engaging with their benefits and discounts platform.

This level of engagement is not only impressive when you consider the circumstances and disruption around the COVID-19 pandemic, but also due to the fact that so many of its workforce don’t use a computer as part of their day-to-day role. That means a lot of people are choosing to engage with the ‘BIG Benefits’ platform in their own spare time.

This is just the beginning for Babcock. Establishing an employee benefits and discounts platform that’s easily accessible to all of their employees is the first phase of a wider plan to deliver a best-in-class Employee Value Proposition.

“Our intention is for the RG platform to become a one-stop shop for employees where they have access to everything they need, whether that’s benefits, discounts, share purchase plans, wellbeing resources or mental health advice,” Donna explains.

“The flexibility of the system gives us a lot of control to showcase our EVP in exactly the way we want. Also, we now have the ability to track how many employees are engaging with the platform, which products are the most popular and how much they are saving on average. I can log in to the platform and quickly check on key stats and metrics across a range of KPIs, all of which are updated in real time on the admin dashboard.”

Donna and the Babcock team now have all the tools at their disposal to be able to pinpoint what’s working, tweak their approach, promote fresh content and ensure they’re always engaging as many employees as possible. There’s certainly plenty more to come!