VOLUNTARY BENEFITS
Sun Chemical launches voluntary benefits
The world's largest producer of printing inks and pigments, Sun Chemical, is reviewing its benefits package for UK-based employees. As part of this process, the company has positioned the look of its new voluntary benefits scheme at the core of the project.
Provided by Asperity Employee Benefits, the Sun Xtras voluntary benefits programme was launched at the end of September 2010 to 1,100 employees across the UK and Ireland. The mix of employees is varied from many factory-based and laboratory workers to field-based sales/technical assistance and general business functional personnel.
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The Sun Xtras scheme is based on Asperity’s employee discounts platform, Reward Gateway, from where staff can access over 3,000 specially-negotiated retail offers online, by telephone, in-store and by text message. Some of the scheme's most popular retailers include Amazon, Asda, Comet and Sainsbury's.
Employee engagement with the Sun Xtras programme reached 50% within one month, which exceeds the average engagement expected from a mostly offline workforce, according to Asperity.
Sally Foster, HR Director for Sun Chemical, said: “We are thrilled with the level of engagement so far; the launch roadshows were attended by the majority of site-based staff, and feedback from these events alone show it has boosted morale within the company.”
Communications programme
The Sun Chemical HR team used one of the firm’s primary lines of work, the production of inks for newspapers and magazines, as a basis for its benefits communication theme. Playing on the name chosen for the benefits scheme, the headline “Xtra, Xtra, Read All About It!” was used across the communications which included a newspaper-style newsletter, workplace posters and a payslip note with a pop-out wallet card.
Roadshows were also held at many of the UK and Republic of Ireland sites, where employees were given demonstrations of the scheme and talked through how Sun Xtras works.
A final word
“When we began this process, we weren’t quite sure where to start, as we made a number of changes to the benefits package in recent years and the whole project felt very bitty. After appointing Asperity to provide our employee discount scheme, it became clear that developing a common look and feel for all our benefits around the Sun Xtras portal was the perfect solution. Shopping discounts is the one thing that is universal to all employees - everybody needs to shop, whether it’s for their groceries at Asda or for clothes from Marks and Spencer or Debenhams - so it is a great place to start with our benefits relaunch. They also help stretch our employees’ net pay further in the current difficult economic climate.” - Sally Foster, HR Director for Sun Chemical.
Want to know more?
Asperity Employee Benefits is “the UK’s leading provider of integrated employee benefits”. To find out more visit www.asperity.co.uk.