Global Lingo

About Global Lingo

Global Lingo is a language solutions provider with over 100 in-house employees, covering Europe, the Americas, Asia and Africa. They pride themselves on providing professional and high-quality language services, which they have over a decade’s worth of experience in.

Introduction

As is the case for many fast-growing and multi-location companies, Global Lingo found it difficult to provide benefits that met everybody’s needs. It was this which initially made them implement Perkbox — and as People Operations Manager, Frosso Skoteinioti states, the constant growth of our global offering has been perfect for them.

“The way we went about it was to ask staff ‘What do you want to see in terms of benefits?’ We got everyone’s feedback…and because we couldn’t get a hundred different things for a hundred different individuals, we tried to find something that could give people the flexibility to choose what they wanted. That’s how we found Perkbox.

We’ve [since] seen more and more perks for different locations, which is why we decided to continue our collaboration.”

Driving development

When it comes to their people, Frosso says growth is at the forefront of their efforts.

“Obviously we want to see longevity in our staff, but when the time comes for people to move — because that happens — what we would consider as a success is that they move on to do something that they're passionate about, not to do the same job in another language service provider. Because for us that would mean that we've done something wrong.”

Some of the Learning & Development benefits on Perks hub have helped with this, including ones related to Global Lingo’s field.

“I can tell you this from experience. Anyone who's in this industry knows at least one more language, and they always have an interest in learning another! So I'm sure [those benefits] would have piqued people's interest!”

Promoting values-driven behaviour

Despite their growth, Global Lingo still sees themselves as a “small, family-oriented kind of company” in terms of culture. A major part of this is pushing their company values and recognising people who live and breathe these values.

Perkbox’s Celebration hub allows companies to link every recognition with their values. This not only keeps them front of mind for people, but it increases the chances of values-driven behaviour being replicated. Frosso explains how this works for her business.

“We have a quarterly values award, and we use Perkbox to recognise colleagues and tag the company value that the person has exhibited. There’s a score that’s kept every quarter and whoever gets the most nominations gets a financial reward.”

Celebration hub also allows the company to get all of their employees aligned with the company mission — regardless of which office they're in. Getting a dispersed workforce on the same page is a major challenge for global businesses, but with Celebration hub, Global Lingo has a tool that enables this.

Recently, we partnered with Microsoft to launch an app for Microsoft Teams, which enables businesses to embed Celebration hub into their day-to-day workflow. This is something Frosso particularly values as it means all recognition efforts and information “will be in a single place”.

She adds:

“We are also going to be launching a yearly awards ceremony and one of the awards is around the company values. We’re going to get the stats from all the recognitions across the year to form the list of nominees.”

Providing ideas and insights

As People Operations Manager, Frosso has many plates to spin, so being able to save time where she can is important. Perkbox integrates with Global Lingo’s HR Information System, which automates the process of adding new joiners and removing leavers. The Admin hub gives her easy access to all industry-leading engagement stats, while she also gets engagement ideas through a mix of marketing material and practical advice from a dedicated Customer Success Manager. This is something Frosso found super useful.

“It was easy for me when I logged on as an admin. I was able to find information very easily — it was very intuitive and I didn't need to spend too much of my time looking for different things. The meetings I had with our Customer Success Manager were also very helpful — she was able to provide very good snapshots and tips on how we can further promote certain elements. The combination of the platform and that engagement is helpful.”

A best-in-class platform

Employee retention at Global Lingo has increased and Frosso believes a “big element” of this was down to benefits and the culture of recognition they have. With a 91% activation rate, Perkbox is clearly popular with employees — and Frosso is clear that it stacks up well against all of the other tools out there.

“I was pleasantly surprised to see the very high engagement we had with the platform. I would say Perkbox is the HR system that gives the most value, purely because it gives employees the freedom to choose what they want.”