Fife Council switches VB provider to boost employee engagement
Fife Council have switched their voluntary benefits provider in order to boost employee engagement and offer discounts at a wider range of retailers.
The improved VB scheme, provided by Asperity Employee Benefits, launched in February to the Council’s 23,000 employees. Based on Asperity’s Reward Gateway platform, employees have access to a wide range of shopping discounts and offers online, over the phone and in-store, Cashback offers and discounted retail vouchers. The programme allows employees to obtain discounts on grocery shopping at ASDA, Somerfield, Sainsbury’s and Waitrose which was seen as important to offer to staff in the current economic climate. The programme is being communicated to staff through a series of benefits newsletters distributed internally to every employee and Asperity have arranged a launch competition where staff can win an Apple iPod, Samsung Digital Camera and a digital photo frame.
Fife Council employees can log on to a customised website from home as well as work to maximise accessibility.
As part of the scheme takeover, Asperity were tasked with boosting the uptake of existing local offers already negotiated directly by the Council and available to all employees. Over 130 local retailers are now promoted by the discount scheme and employees can access the offers in-store by simply showing their staff ID card.
Ruth Brown, HR Adviser Reward & Establishment at Fife Council, commented: “We believe it’s important to support local businesses so we have teamed up with local suppliers to give employees discounts on a broad range of products and services throughout Fife. Asperity have been really flexible and accommodating with the design of the programme to promote all elements of our employee benefits scheme, and we are pleased with how smooth the transfer has been.”
Lauren Naze, Account Manager from Asperity, added: “It’s great to work with Fife and we’ve been able to employ our considerable experience in working with local authorities to meet the challenges of reaching a diverse workforce. We continue to develop a package of communication techniques designed to tackle this and have found this approach to be very successful.”
