How Haberdashers elevated appreciation and made salaries go further

About Haberdashers’ Academies Trust South

Haberdashers’ Academies Trust South is a multi-academy trust, consisting of four secondary schools and five primary schools.

With over 600 employees and a vision of ‘Every School an Excellent School’, the Trust has a number of key aims when it comes to its culture. Two of these are to be regarded as an employer of choice and to attract, retain and develop the best staff.

A platform that solves multiple challenges

To achieve these aims, the Trust was on the lookout for an employee benefits platform that would help them enhance their staff experience. HR Business Partner Ellie Harry says:

“In this industry, there are challenges around recruitment and retention. We had to overcome that and be competitive with our package. Another challenge for our industry is wellbeing, so that was something we wanted to include.”

Perkbox’s all-in-one platform helped with both those aims and a whole lot more.

Director of Communications and Engagement Leena Barrett says that this, along with our excellent reputation in the education sector, was a big selling point.

“We had very good feedback from other Trusts who’d used Perkbox. It wasn’t just the Perks — we were also interested in the celebration and recognition element. That was something that we weren’t doing and this seemed like a good way to integrate it into our general working practices.

And of course, our staff can use Perkbox to get lots of benefits they wouldn’t ordinarily get. This gives them a bit more value for money with things like discounts on their shopping and access to all the wellbeing features.”

Working together to boost engagement

With staff spread across multiple locations, and not always being online, it’s important to be creative and drive engagement. Perkbox offers a raft of engagement communications — including emails, posters, quarterly calendars and regular competitions. Meanwhile, Ellie and Leena ran a number of initiatives themselves.

“Our engagement ideas included the Perkbox user videos which you provided in the Resource Centre”, says Ellie.

“We launched a pop-up competition which aligned with Mental Health Awareness Week — this prompted colleagues to use the wellness offering and make positive changes to their lifestyle. We also used World Acts of Kindness Day to prompt people to use the recognition tool.

We’ve hosted presentations to our individual HR leads. This helped because they became our ambassadors for Perkbox. We also hosted in-school Perkbox presentations with Q&A’s on how to use the platform and get the most out of the savings.”

This has had a great impact on uptake, and Ellie has seen a particular improvement in the last few months, as her team ramped up their initiatives:

“Just since April, we’ve seen a 47% increase in fixed savings and a 45% increase in interactions on the platform.”

“With the recent International HR Day — we didn't actually promote this but saw great engagement on the platform. This has a lot to do with the work we did prior to that in terms of promoting the recognition part of the platform. I also know that Perkbox did a lot of work emailing users directly to recognise their HR teams. That was a really nice surprise for us because we didn’t promote it and people knew to use this tool to celebrate colleagues.”

Extra value for employer and employees

The Trust recently renewed its contract with Perkbox, citing not just the benefits to employees, but the business itself. Ellie says:

“Perkbox has supported the HR function by allowing us to easily signpost resources, especially wellness ones. We’re really going to integrate this into all employee matters. It’s all free and there’s great resources there to encourage positive lifestyles.

We’re partnering with Perkbox because one of our main aims is to be an employer of choice, and having an attractive and competitive employee benefits package is part of that. The platform is modern, easy to use, and allows us to get an insight into how our colleagues are using it.”

While pay pressures are a reality for businesses everywhere, there’s no doubt that some feel the strain more than others. Leena believes Perkbox is especially important for organisations in these particular sectors.

“In the education sector, salaries aren’t as high as others. Having a platform like Perkbox means employees get that extra value. This makes a really big difference for teachers and support staff who work hard all year round.”