A global challenge
In 2021, Cressida Sergeant, Chief Commercial Officer, took on responsibility for Traveltek’s people agenda. She immediately recognised a number of challenges.
Some were linked to the impact COVID-19 was having on employees in the travel industry, whereas other challenges were more typical for international companies that have diverse and dispersed workforces.
She was immediately on the lookout for a benefits and rewards solution that would help them:
- Boost low employee morale
- Enhance internal communication across teams and countries
- Enable peer-to-peer recognition on a global level
With the Perkbox platform specifically designed to be location agnostic, Cressida believed it could play a key role in Traveltek’s people and culture initiatives.
“We looked around at a lot of the tools that were out there and I was really impressed by what I saw with Perkbox. It was clear that it was a global solution that could fix a lot of our challenges, especially around communication and peer-to-peer recognition.”
A smooth takeoff
Another big benefit was the simplicity of going live across locations. This was especially important for Cressida who is responsible for the Sales, Marketing and Account Management teams worldwide, in addition to her work on the people agenda.
“One of the great things about Perkbox is it’s a really easy to set up system. When we rolled it out globally to the rest of our colleagues it was such a simple set-up, in terms of them being able to get up and running straight away."
A first-class employee experience
Traveltek were quick to realise that, rather than being a standalone part of their Employee Value Proposition (EVP), the Perkbox platform could complement everything else they were doing.
For example, one of Cressida’s key initiatives has been the introduction of a company 'culture squad'. They’re responsible for running fortnightly company updates, and Perkbox’s Celebration hub allows them to view and call out people who’ve been recognised. Within nine months, they’d seen over 550 recognitions sent across locations.
“We’ve found this is a real way to drive collaboration across our global teams and make sure people get the recognition that they deserve. We’ve also used the polls functionality on Celebration hub a lot — for example on International Women’s Day, we asked people to vote for a woman across Traveltek who had inspired them."
Similarly, the growing need for wellbeing support was met by combining Perkbox’s Wellness hub with other important initiatives. Cressida believes that this help came at a “really great point.” She explains:
“We’d had feedback from our teams around wanting to do activities that would improve their mental health. Not only did we do some training across the business on mental health awareness, but there were some brilliant tools on Wellness hub that our staff have been able to utilise. We encourage people on a daily basis to put time in their diaries to do the yoga or the activities. I’ve also had some really brilliant feedback from the teams on the quality of some of those workout sessions and sleep stories.”
It’s not just the platform which syncs in with Traveltek’s people initiatives. The marketing materials on the Resource Centre give Cressida and her team additional tools to ensure engagement stays high.
And with a 99% activation rate after almost a year of using our new platform, this seems to be doing the trick.
“I find that the admin section on Perkbox is really useful for giving me ideas throughout the month on how I’m going to drive engagement. It’s a brilliant section — Perkbox does a great job of actually giving me the ideas that make it easier for me to implement this on a monthly basis.
[Another] really useful part of Perkbox is that as an administrator I can go in and see the engagement levels. The new tools where I can see that across teams is really useful as well.“
Around the world in so many ways
The more locations a workforce is spread across, the more challenging it can be to harmonise culture and communications. Perkbox’s global app and dedicated Culture hub ensures a true ‘anytime, anywhere’ experience — something Cressida says has helped both employer and employees.
“We really enjoy the Culture hub section…the fact that we can now communicate with all of our global colleagues, and they all get access to Perkbox, has only been something that strengthened our global culture over the last year."
This element of global efficiency can also be seen in Traveltek's use of Celebration hub.
“When you’re running multiple teams across different markets, it’s great to have one tool where you’re able to give that recognition to global colleagues. You’re [also] able to run polls that go across multiple time zones.
And [overall], everyone has access to all of our benefits and it all sits in one neat and tidy place.”
Now, ensuring equal access to employees across the globe is great — but it’s also important to take their broad range of lifestyles into account. After all, what works for employees in Birmingham won’t necessarily work for employees in Brisbane. As a company that happens to have remote employees in these exact locations (amongst others), Traveltek know what a challenge that is.
To this end, they found that the Flexi Perks offering was “brilliant because it’s a lot more personalised to people.” Traveltek provide each employee 25 Flexi points a month, which can be spent on a range of extras, or saved up over a period of time.
“It’s a lot more beneficial to our global teams. I’ve heard some really great stories about people saving those Flexi points up and how they spent them in different ways, so it’s definitely been something that we really see drive engagement across our company."
As well as the Flexi Perks, the vast range of discounts on Perks hub — covering everything from day-to-day shopping, to large one-off purchases — meant this was something to suit all lifestyles, in all locations.
Cressida adds:
“It’s amazing how these small things make a big difference to people. I’ve had people consistently come and tell me they saved money on vouchers, days out, the cinema. One of our Australian team members spoke to me about how she saved $200 on a new fridge she was purchasing!”
Nine months after implementing the platform, Traveltek employees had saved thousands — a big boost at a time of global economic uncertainty.
Flying forward
Cressida feels that the results so far justify Traveltek’s decision to harmonise benefits, rewards and communications across the company.
“Perkbox has been a wonderful addition into our benefits package. From a cost saving perspective it’s been brilliant for our teams. From a morale perspective with the communications it’s been brilliant.
We run regular surveys across the business and Perkbox consistently comes up as something the teams find as a valuable tool. We want to give our employees as much support as we can and Perkbox has been a wonderful tool to help us on our journey to improve our culture as much as possible.”
The hard work doesn’t stop here though. Companies like Traveltek will continue to grow, and being able to attract, retain and motivate top talent will always be a priority. The global nature of our solution puts us in a strong position to help with this — and they happen to agree.
“The fact that we’ve implemented Perkbox and a number of other initiatives to try and improve our benefits has definitely helped in a market where, as we know, talent is really hard to retain.
[Going forward], our growth will come out of the North American market so it’s brilliant that we’ve been able to roll Perkbox out to our US colleagues, and as that team grows I'm sure we’ll be utilising Perkbox even more in that part of the world.”
