Selco Builders Warehouse use employee engagement platform to unite workforce and decrease employee turnover by 5% in the first two months of launch

What they needed

Selco Builders Warehouse has a primarily store-based workforce with a high element of manual work. Most employees work in a warehouse environment and have no immediate access to computers.

The company wanted to use different communication channels to get its messages across, as well as information about new benefit offerings and company updates. But people weren’t having the best experience with the current communications, causing frustration and a lack of understanding about important information and where to find it.

Simon Ball, HR Manager at Selco, needed a way to streamline communications and benefits to increase employee engagement and decrease employee turnover.

After conducting an engagement survey in 2017, Simon and his team had five main objectives for 2018:

• Raise awareness of staff benefits package.

• Raise staff engagement levels.

• Improve employee communications.

• Increase traffic to employee engagement platform.

• Launch Holiday Buying.

How we helped

Simon’s overall approach included adopting an employee engagement platform to unite its workforce and strengthen internal communications. The goal was to have the marketing department strengthen and extend internal branding into employee communications.

The first step was introducing the “My Gateway” platform – the company’s new engagement platform (housing employee benefits, discounts, reward and recognition, and employee communications initiatives) with Reward Gateway. The team introduced the platform with a “Mad March” themed campaign, which featured a “Hunt the Easter Egg” competition to drive awareness and excitement of the new employee engagement platform and all it entailed.

Another part of the approach included gaining buy-in from Senior Management. Simon knew this was going to be a vital component of My Gateway’s success, which led him to incentivised managers with a competition, adding even more excitement to the launch. The team with the largest percentage increase in My Gateway registrations (in their respective regions) would win a hamper as a prize. Simon and his team attended a Senior Manager’s meeting and presented the competition in-person, along with the target figure and a “Managers Tool Box” for them to give to Branch Managers with tips to increase engagement levels.

The last, big piece of the approach used Reward Gateway's platform to consolidate all offerings into one place, with a single log-in. Simon knew this meant ensuring that employees could access computers, and Branch Managers made sure their office computers were available for registration. There was also technical training including a video on “how to login” with inductions and “HR Terminals” in each branch to provide access to tablets for all employees.

What they achieved

Using the platform’s insights tool, Simon and his team were able to analyse registrations. At the end of February 2018, Simon saw a total of 2,299 employees had registered on My Gateway – 68% of the workforce. Following the “Mad March” campaign, registrations increased to 78% of Selco’s workforce.

Now, 85% of the workforce is registered and counting. On top of that, staff turnover had decrease by 5% two months after launching the new employee engagement platform. And, after the launch of Holiday Buying in March 2018, 126 employees applied, with a total spend of £44,000. Meaning, employees saved £13,300 and the company saved £6,100 in National Insurance contributions – a significant first step in the launch of a new benefit.

Employees now rate the company's benefits 14% more favourably than they did before the launch of the employee engagement platform. And overall, there has been a tangible uplift in employee engagement as a result of the “Mad March” campaign with increased awareness in the staff benefits package.