West London College

About West London College

West London College (WLC) has 20,000 students, 600 members of staff, and a significant ‘English as a second language department’ – of which they’re the largest provider in the country.

WLC is made up of five colleges spread across the entire West London region. They teach everything from Maths and English, to Construction and Catering.

Challenges

Welfare of the students is at the heart of the staff’s shared mission at WLC. “What we strive for is that the wellbeing of the students is at the heart of everything we do,” says Chizoba Onyiuke, Marketing Manager.

Having to be switched on to the wellbeing of 20,000 students can make working in higher education a tough job to juggle. Wendy Peskett who’s the Google Experience Manager at WLC said, “Everybody needs a little bit of a boost now and again and working in Further Education is particularly challenging sometimes.”

This is backed up by WLC’s HR Director, Josh Humphreys, who sees how the tougher side to working in higher education can affect attraction and retention, “The challenges mean that we have to work hard to retain staff. We need to make this college an attractive and supportive place.”

Solution

Seeing an opportunity to support the wellbeing of their staff and show how much they appreciate their effort, WLC launched the Perkbox platform. It includes a range of tools to help employees with their overall wellbeing – physical, emotional and financial. There are also hundreds of perks, discounts and freebies which WLC were able to reward their employees with.

This was quickly picked up on by their staff members as a way to increase morale. “It can really just give people a boost of morale and think it's not all the end of the world,” says Wendy. “If I've had a bad day, I've had this perk and I can go on and I can do this again tomorrow.”

Chizoba Onyiuke, Marketing Manager at WLC, added, “Having Perkbox has impacted my experience at West London College because it's made me enjoy coming into work and it's also made me feel like a valuable member of the team.”

Results

After having Perkbox for a year, WLC saw staff turnover reduce dramatically by 8%. Their HRD Josh told us, “Over the last year Perkbox, taken with other initiatives we've implemented has reduced staff turnover by 8%, which is very significant.”

And it’s clear to see why the platform has helped to reduce the staff turnover rate. “Having something like Perkbox, it shows that our employers are saying, ‘we know what you do and we know it's hard, so we want to reward you for that because you don't have to do it’.” Says Raemona Andrews, Curriculum Leader for Health & Social Care.

A sentiment which is compounded by Wendy Peskett, who says, “To get something where somebody else is recognising that you're doing good work and other people know about it can really just give people a boost of morale.”

When asked if he’d recommend Perkbox to others, Josh Humphreys said, “We would recommend Perkbox because it provides a significant range of benefits that staff want and value.” And when commenting on the platform itself, Josh said, “The technology is excellent and the customer support is excellent, so I would have no hesitation recommending Perkbox.”