Integrating benefits for West Lothian Council
With some 8,000 employees, West Lothian Council is one of 32 unitary council areas in Scotland. The organisation has employees covering all manner of work including management and administrative, highway maintenance, schools and colleges. With a large geographical area to cover, employee communications and a simple benefits message is key. As an award-winning council, West Lothian need to support a strong employer brand; their ‘slogan’ is West Lothian Delivers.
West Lothian previously used Asperity’s Reward Gateway employee discounts product and had appointed separate providers for Childcare Vouchers and Cycle to Work. This meant that the authority had to handle and manage three different provider relationships, co-ordinate three different employee communications campaigns and employees had to understand three different websites each with separate login information.
As part of Asperity’s normal benefits review process we suggested that West Lothian could provide a better employee experience, and therefore increase takeup, if all of the benefits were integrated onto a single website. This would mean only one web address to communicate, one communications plan to deliver and one login for each employee to remember. Following a market-testing procurement exercise, Asperity was appointed to relaunch WLC Benefits as Scotland’s first fully integrated voluntary benefits programme.
The new WLC Benefits programme incorporates employee discounts, salary sacrifice and locally sourced and council-specific benefits all into a single programme. By consolidating provision with Asperity, West Lothian has reduced external costs and also made the benefit programme easier to manage – saving time in a busy HR department. Asperity’s account manager Aimee Wilkinson is now charged with delivering a single, integrated employee communication plan covering the whole range of benefits on offer.
“What many people miss initially is that even with an expensive flex-system where there is a single login to register for benefits and make selections, there is nearly always a third-party provider behind them for Childcare Vouchers and Cycle to Work. So after the election period, the employee still has to learn about separate websites so that they can manage their Childcare Voucher scheme. With Reward Gateway we have no external providers – it’s all managed by us internally, so there is no handover and no dropping of balls. This makes for a simpler employee experience which is much appreciated by staff using the scheme.
Helen Craik, Operations Director – Asperity.
