Accounting and finance firm discovers innovative rewards to engage widespread workforce with easy-to-use platform to deliver £40k ROI

What they needed

When Olivia Parrish became the new Group Head of HR at accountants and business advisors Haines Watts, she saw that there was a real opportunity for reward innovation across the Group’s 55-plus different locations.

Standard pension and health care benefits were in place but nothing which excited employees to engage with Haines Watts and feel better connected to the overall company vision.

At her previous employer, Olivia had implemented Reward Gateway and knew it could solve these issues as well as deliver a strong ROI. Getting budget approval for any HR innovation can be difficult, but luckily Olivia's board members were excited to drive forward a new, engaging reward strategy. The transparency of the value of the benefit, with no hidden fees or costs associated with employees using the product, as well as a genuine desire to make employees’ money go further helped solidify a fast approval for the new communications and discounts platform.

How we helped

Haines Watts chose to use Reward Gateway’s SmartHub® platform for its responsive nature, accessible via smartphone, laptop, tablet, and desktop computer. Olivia was particularly impressed with how effective her communications campaign was made by SmartHub® through its advanced features such as segmentation and customisable content. The bespoke branded SmartHub was aptly named “Haines Watts Rewards,” which has become the brand name for all rewards at Haines Watts.

“For me, the biggest benefit with our SmartHub® is being able to tailor and target communications across specific areas of the business. It allows us to manage content around key themes and events whilst still being consistent with the Haines Watts brand,” Olivia says. “Being able to manage all of this in-house is a big draw, too,” she added. “We can add a new theme, new images, new content, change the layout, and choose which employees see what — all in an instant and without the constant need of support.”

With the new platform launch planned for a couple of months before Christmas, it was vital that Olivia was able to create bespoke communication pieces which focussed around the high employee discounts for gift shopping. To create further buzz, the organisation ran competitions to randomly reward employees who signed up within the first week of launch. This was maintained with a corporate challenge held across all sites to use Reward Gateway’s discounts platform to deliver instant in-store and online vouchers and Cashback on more than 400 retailers.

What they achieved

Engagement with the platform was high from the get-go, Olivia says. This was helped by the fact that SmartHub® was completely new to Haines Watts employees, exciting, and incredibly easy to use. It also brought national benefits which Olivia says were innovative and intuitive to how people already shop.

After the first year, 85% of employees were engaged with the platform and had saved £117K through the discounts available – giving Haines Watts an ROI of £40K and Olivia tangible results she can show to the board.

Olivia uses the dedicated account management and design resources available from Reward Gateway to nurture a strong benefits brand for Haines Watts, working as a partner in her organisation’s commitment to unifying her diverse workforce.