Owain Thomas reveals how Bibby Financial Services revamped its reward strategy and won Savings and Benefits Team of the Year
Bibby Financial Services (BFS) won the first ever WSB Award. It was named Savings and Benefits Team of the Year, reflecting how the firm used its reward and benefits strategy to help begin achieving its ambitious growth targets.
By 2020, Bibby wants to double its 720-strong nationwide workforce and recognises that in order to attract and retain talent, it must focus on the needs of its employees. The firm acknowledged that its existing pay and benefits proposition wasn’t keeping pace with the much larger organisations it was competing with so it devised and implemented a revitalised benefits strategy.
After much consultation with its staff a four pronged approach was chosen:
- Competitive UK pay structure aligned to market rates providing clarity and transparency to all employees
- Bonus scheme of 20% for all employees
- New salary-sacrifice pension scheme
- Fully integrated online reward programme, giving employees a flexible approach to their benefits and matching exactly what they want
“So there were four mini-projects within the overall project,” explains HR project manager Vicky Smith, who collected the award. “We introduced our flexible benefits as a response to listening to our employees. We do take our employee feedback seriously, but we are a company that’s competing against bigger employers in the sector and so it really is a war for talent and we needed to compete like the big boys. So we went down the route of flexible benefits and worked in partnership with Thomsons Online Benefits.”
The consultation process to get to that stage was extensive and has continued since the launch of the new strategy. It included surveys, focus groups, speaking to employees who used to work for competitors to find out what benefits other organisations offered and then adding to and developing the offer further.
“We’ve really kept it fresh and alive by continuing to strive to improve Your Rewards and regularly doing something different, whether it is the introduction of Your Wellbeing, or introducing new benefits,” Smith continues.
“The team worked really hard, putting in lots of extra hours and we like to communicate face to face so that meant lots of miles up and down the country to see our employees. We’re about to go into the third annual window (the flex scheme was launched in March 2012), and we’re still updating and refreshing Your Rewards – and the feedback is still really positive.
“We are still listening to employees and giving them a flex portal that they want and we use it as a one-stop shop for everything to do with reward now. All the total reward statements are on there, all the fact sheets to do with all the benefits, the Your Wellbeing portal and information about giving back to the community.”
The feedback from employees has indeed improved significantly, with a series of positive metrics, including:
- An 11-percentage point increase in employees who would recommend BFS as a place to work (from 64% to 75%);
- An increase in pensions take-up from 33% of staff to 57%;
- A collective saving to employees of 62% on national insurance contributions (NICs) and a 69% increase in tax saving;
- A substantial reduction on the premiums paid by Bibby and an even bigger saving on NICs.
The team’s communications effort was also widely appreciated, with 70% of the workforce agreeing the benefits had been well communicated and 64% valuing the roadshows most.
As welcome as these statistics are, other results are less concrete but often just as relevant to the business.
“Retention has definitely improved as has employee engagement but it’s not always tangible,” Smith says.
“It’s the feel good factor – managing directors tell me there’s a buzz about benefits; people are having conversations about what they’re going to do with their flex pot. And we can use it as a recruitment tool – we’ve shared it with our recruitment agency, so they are brought in and know about that and can sell it to potential candidates.
“So we’ve increased retention and reduced administration costs, got the feel good factor, and seen an improvement in engagement and improvement in Times Top 100 rating which employees vote for.”
