BENEFITS
Malmaison sees increased benefits uptake from dual language communications
Malmaison and Hotel Du Vin, the boutique hotels group, has seen a 60% increase in “benefits registrations” since the introduction of new web videos which explain its online benefits system in both English and Polish.
Produced by consultants at Asperity Employee Benefits, the three videos showcase the "MalHDV Rewards" web site to employees using a special web video technique known as screencasting. The system combines a video of a web site, showing mouse movements and keyboard strokes, with a specially recorded audio track in English and Polish.
Glenn Elliott, Asperity’s managing director, said: “Screencasting is a really useful technique which provides many of the benefits of video with a much lower cost than full video production. It’s great for demonstrating online systems and with the success of this pilot we’ll be developing further modules to help clients cost-effectively communicate all parts of their benefits to employees.”
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Employee research
A third of Malmaison’s 2,000 UK-based staff are from Eastern Europe and the majority of those are Polish. Employee research suggested that this group was “under-performing in its engagement with the employee benefits” on offer, so a Polish language version of the video was an important requirement in the project.
Malmaison’s Group Director of People Development Sean Wheeler said: “Almost half of our staff have English as a second language and as a group of almost 900 they are a key part of our workforce. It’s critical that we engage with all of our people”.
Increased take-up
The project began in autumn 2008 and management information data was tracked through a pilot to the end of December. Initial data has shown an increase in registrations of 60% over the previous quarter, which Malmaison and Asperity attribute to the new videos and the promotional work. Importantly, the benefits registration process has shown that as many as 80% of employees who saw the new screencast videos went on to register with the benefits programme.
Malmaison now plans to build on the success of the pilot by rolling out additional multi-language screencasts on other parts of the benefits programme including childcare vouchers.
Want to know more?
Asperity Employee Benefits is “. . . the UK's leading provider of integrated voluntary benefits. Over 100 of the UK's leading employers and 850,000 employees rely on us to provide employee benefits programmes that deliver exceptional, measurable employee engagement”. To find out more visit www.asperity.co.uk.