Australian Sports Foundation

About the Australian Sports Foundation

Australian Sports Foundation (ASF) is the country’s leading not-for-profit sports fundraising body. With a goal to develop an active and healthy nation, ASF works with sporting organisations, grassroots clubs and athletes to run fundraising campaigns, as well as raising money themselves for grant programs.

Introduction

ASF has a hybrid working model, and with employees spread across Australia, the leadership team were keen to develop a culture of appreciation between people that weren’t always together. While they always try to bring the team for group events, strategy days and Christmas celebrations, a gap was identified around reward and recognition.

Developing a winning team spirit

Perkbox’s Celebration hub tool was designed with dispersed teams in mind. Whether employees are in different offices, states or even countries, they can recognise each other in a simple and engaging way.

Executive Assistant Jodie Constable was delighted with how easy it is to use, stating that “it takes a matter of minutes for staff to jump on to recognise their peers”. She believes this is one of the reasons it’s become a core part of people’s working weeks.

“At ASF, when we think of recognition, we think of Perkbox and Celebration Hub. [It’s] really assisted us in turning our reward and recognition culture from something that was done on an ad-hoc basis, to something that is now done nearly every week.

“Being a hybrid workplace, you can’t always keep across what everyone is up to and the Celebration Hub highlights and draws attention to those little wins across the business.”

A speedy solution for regular rewarding

While recognition is super important, it can be even more powerful when complemented with rewards, particularly when managers are showing appreciation for their teams’ good work. Previously, ASF leaders would make recognitions on an infrequent basis, and Jodie had to manually source and purchase the rewards. However, the introduction of Global Reward to our platform has changed the game.

A world-first, it gives managers the ability to instantly reward their people with location-agnostic Reward points. As well as reducing the admin burden on Jodie — who simply allocates Reward point budgets to managers — it makes rewarding a more regular habit.

“Having access to Reward points has really helped cement monthly recognition from our Leadership team. We now have a Recognition item included on our monthly team meeting agenda and we allocate Reward points to the leaders every month. Something that was previously only done once or twice a year is now being done every month.”

Something for every individual, in every lane

It’s always been important to ASF that employees were given choice — previously Jodie used to source multi-store gift cards for them as rewards. Perbox has made this more seamless and digital, in a number of ways.

The Reward points we mentioned earlier can be spent on a huge catalogue of rewards — empowering employees and ensuring they’ll get something meaningful each time.

Meanwhile, Perks hub has a wide range of deals and discounts to help people save money on everything from groceries to clothes to travel. With studies showing that the average Australian household spends almost $2,000 a month on goods and services, and employees looking for tangible help during these financially challenging times, Perks hub takes on even more importance.

Just as important for ASF employees is the monthly allocation of 40 Flexi points they each get. They can spend these on a selection of extras, or roll them over.

Jodie believes that this ability to cater for everyone’s lifestyles is key, and in line with how the company likes to treat its people.

“We have always been big on giving our staff a choice in terms of how they are rewarded, and the Reward points system has allowed us to continue providing choice and flexibility to our staff.

“The staff are also really impressed with the ways they can use their Flexi points. Some are serial spenders and spend their points every month, whereas others choose to accumulate their points and save up for something really special.”

An all-star platform

ASF employees have an 100% activation rate on the platform, something Jodie puts down to the simplicity of everything being in a single place.

“It really is a one-stop-shop. Celebration hub has really promoted greater peer-to-peer recognition, which is such an important factor in building a strong culture. We can also reward those staff who go above and beyond with Reward points.

Wellness Hub is there to support staff with their wellbeing — I've heard some great feedback from staff using the meditations, sleep stories and at home workouts. I personally have used the meditations with my young family as well.

And of course, Perks hub is the cherry on top of our employee benefits package. It’s an obvious favourite with our staff and has the highest usage out of all the hubs.

Here at Perkbox, we pride ourselves on our ability to increase employee engagement. The platform is the star of the show, but we also provide ongoing support and resources — which Jodie has found especially useful.

“As the admin, having access to resources and ideas on how to engage staff is so helpful. We receive monthly emails with the engagement calendar and planner. It’s a wonderful reminder of what is happening in a particular month and a lot of the time it provides a prompt for me to share things with our team.”

Playing the long game

The Perkbox platform is something ASF staff are engaged with from day 1, with the onboarding process including a session specifically about the platform. The first 12 months have definitely been a success — and Jodie doesn’t think this will stop anytime soon.

“Before Perkbox there wasn’t a lot happening in this space. For me, implementing Perkbox was the start of modernising our EVP. The platform will always form a key component of our benefits package. I see us being around for the long haul.”