Flight Centre

Individual challenges for individual employees

With the COVID-19 pandemic causing Flight Centre to rethink how work was done, employee wellbeing became an even bigger priority. The business became acutely aware of how varied everybody’s wellbeing and benefits needs were. As with many things, a one-size-fits-all approach wasn’t going to work. Jack Wardingley, Employee Benefits Manager, says that personalising their offering and ensuring there was something for everyone became Flight Centre’s biggest wellbeing challenge.

“The meaning of wellbeing was different across the business. We had to make sure that the employees on furlough were still engaged and sticking to a routine as much as possible, while also managing their understandable anxiety. Conversely, those that were still working were faced with completely new challenges – mainly how to juggle home working with their everyday lives.”

 

Providing a meaningful and holistic solution

Recognising that they had to make their employee offering more holistic, Flight Centre decided to signpost their people to Perkbox’s Wellness hub. The wide range of content – from workout videos, to meditation guides, to sleep stories – appealed, as it catered for everybody’s physical and mental health needs.

Crucially, people across all locations were able to access resources in their own time. Wardingley stated:

“We’ve found previously that having a good resource is one thing but making them accessible is sometimes even more important than the content! What people have loved about the platform is that they don’t have to approach anyone to get access or sign into anything different. It’s all there for them when they feel the need to use it – on their laptops, tablets, smartphones and even their smartwatches."

 

Wellbeing in action

Wardingley believes that providing wellbeing assistance to people across the business, when they really needed it, has created greater employee attachment and generated a “feel-good factor”. He also thinks that Wellness hub encouraged people to explore things that they previously may not have.

“Things like the meditation guides and talking therapies are hard to come by, so these were new for a lot of people. On more than one occasion, employees have mentioned the positive impact these resources had on their own development."

 

In addition to Wellness hub, Flight Centre employees also have access to Perks hub, Celebration hub and Culture hub. Wardingley believes this creates “a huge opportunity to increase usage and engagement with all our people going forward.”

The challenge of providing a wide- ranging employee wellbeing offering is one which is here to stay, and one which Flight Centre have focused on even after the peak of the pandemic.