Introduction
Lucie Bendakova is the HR Manager across the EMEA and Asia regions, and oversaw the rollout of Perkbox to employees in the UK four years ago, and most recently France, Italy, Germany, Poland and Sweden. Despite the scale of the company, she describes a culture that’s connected and tight-knit.
“We try and build a family-friendly feel. We’ve only got one owner and the culture has been built based on that. We try to maintain and enhance that culture as we grow.”
Giving people best-in-class discounts
Back in 2020 — a time where many companies wanted to provide better support to their people — Lucie chose Perkbox for her employees.
“One of the main things we wanted to support our employees with was saving money and getting the best of what’s on the market — just providing them with additional benefits and security.
Obviously the cost of living hasn’t been great, so Perkbox definitely helps employees to be able to save some costs.”
No cost extras
In the last 12 months alone, employees have saved over £16,000. But we don’t just offer the most competitive discounts on the market. Our Flexi Perks offering gives employees a range of extra freebies — at no cost to the business.
Lucie believes that the variety of free perks is one of the reasons Rochester Electronics have a higher engagement rate (71%) than their industry average.
“It’s something extra that people really appreciate. Everyone's got different expectations, different lifestyles. Someone might want to spend on coffee, someone might want to spend on clothes, someone on Amazon. There are so many different choices on Perkbox they like to engage with, and the platform is very easy to navigate.”
Employee-led engagement
That ease of using our platform is another reason Lucie has seen such high engagement. She says this has made Perkbox “part of the employees’ day-to-day”, adding:
“Our employees love the fact that Perkbox is easy to use. They can use the app wherever they are, 24/7. They can obviously use it in a shop, they can use it online, and I think that's really beneficial to them.”
Lucie and her team also do their bit to boost engagement, including a WhatsApp group where tips, perks and promotions are highlighted. However, she was keen to point out that this isn’t a HR-driven exercise.
“It’s definitely not just us. We occasionally send an ad-hoc message to remind people of new perks because we understand what our people like…but in general, no matter what level or department, people are naturally engaged and they all share the information. It’s not just managers or HR.”
Charging forward
Rochester Electronics are now embedding Perkbox even deeper into their culture. Our Reward points — which can be sent to employees to spend on whatever they want — are set to be used for both internal incentives and key events.
“We’re planning to give points for birthdays and to say thank you to people going above and beyond. We also have internal competitions with the sales teams, and managers were trying to figure out what to give employees when they achieved certain things…but talking about this with the team gave us the idea we can use Perkbox.”
The success of the last four years means Perkbox is a valuable part of Lucie’s engagement efforts — something well loved and well used by her teams across the business!
We’ll let her have the final say on this.
“We haven't tried to move to any other provider, because the feedback from employees has been very positive.”
